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EDITOR’S NOTE

To the making of books about Dickens there is no end With the
exception of Shakespeare there is probably no English author
concerning whose life and work so many volumes have been written
and compiled. From Forster’s historic “life” to Mr. G. K.
Chesterton’s brilliant study, the list is a long and interesting one.
Nor is there like to be an end. In the autumn of 1909 there appeared
a volume devoted to Charles Dickens and his Friends , which, if it
told us nothing now, at least brought within the compass of a
single work much that was hitherto scattered, and scarce a month
passes that does not bring news of some other addition to the ever
growing store of Dickensiana.

Every conceivable form of book has been associated with the
name of Dickens. There are at least two Dickens “ Dictionaries/’
both with merits of their own, and both lacking in many respects ;
there is the late Mr. Kitton’s admirable Dickensiana , more useful a»
a finger-post than as a source of general information ; there is quite
a little library of boc^ks devoted exclusively to the topography of
the novels, such as Kitton’s Dickens Country , Fitzgerald’s Bozland ,
and Pemberton’s Dickens's London ; there are books on all aspects of
the great novelist’s career ; brochures such as Lockwood’s Law and
Lawyers of Pickwick , anthologies without number, books about his
characters, and many “ lives” of varying values; to say nothing
of the innumerable chapters in the autobiographic literature of
the Victorian era, furnishing forth some memories or its foremost
literary figure.

In all this wealth of written words it might be thought the last
had been said that remained to say concerning Charles Dickens ;
but that is far from true, so fascinating is the study of this man’s
personality, so rich In interest every feature of his wonderful oareer.

The present work, however, makes no pretence to add to the
knowledge of Dickens. In it wil) be found nothing new or strange ;
yet, withal, the editor is hopeful that his labours may not bedeemed
ill -spent, and it la surprising that a work of this kind has not earlier
h

EDITOR’S NOTE.

been attempted. It is designed to make available in handy form
for the general reader an immense amount of miscellaneous
matter to which none but students of Dickens, with a large and
well-selected library, could have ready access. If the hand of
Autolycus is hero and there to be observed, perhaps it will not be
gainsaid that the unconsidered trifle is often of sufficient interest
to be worth the picking up.

The Dickens Companion is at once a work of reference and a
book to read. Not to be read, it is true, in the same way as a
continuous biography, but for dipping into at odd moments and
choosing entries as the mood suggests. It will be found to provide
an immense amount of interesting and curious information touching
all phases of Dickens’s life and work, a large and representative
number of books and periodicals having been laid under contribution
for the anecdotal side of the work. In no other work has anything
on quite these lines been attempted, and what we have here is, in
effect, the cream of a whole library. In this way, though nothing
fresh may be set forth, many new points of view are obtained by
bringing together in new relationships old and half-forgotten facts,
the thoughts and memories of the most diverse writers.

But beyond the anecdotal interest of the present volume, it has a
value as a work of reference which the editor may reasonably point
out. A careful chronology of the life of Dickens is here included
for the first time, and will doubtless prove useful to the reader
whenever a question involving any incident in the life of the novelist
is in point ; the synopses of the novels, together with the quoted
descriptions of the various characters, is a feature likely to commend
itself to all students, and not to be found on the lines here followed
in any other work of reference ; the alphabetical list of characters,
with references to the book or story in which they appear, is also
likely to be of service, while a complete bibliography of the writings
of Dickens needs no appraisement.

In a word. The Dickens Companion , as its title indicates, is meant
to be a companionable book, both for the general reader and the
more serious student of the great Victorian novelist. That it is free
from mistakes the editor will not assert ; that it is complete and
definitive he makes no pretence ; but that reasonable care has been
exercised to make it useful, instructive, and entertaining, he respect-
fully submits.

J. A. H.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Editor’s Note ....... i

List of Illustrations . . . . xi

Key to Authorities Quoted .... xiii

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE AND CRITICISM

Boyhood and Youth

In the blacking factory — Glimpses of the Promised Land
— “ A terrible reader ” — His sweetheart- -No zest for
games — Boyish compositions — Early gift for mimicry —

As a reporter — His own recollections — Dickens’s first love
— Pecuniary difficulties . . . . .3

In iiis Family Circle

His mother — As a husband — Mrs. Charles Dickens — Delane’s
advice — Story of an attachment — Love of children —
Learning the polka — In the nursery — Father and daughter
— Death of little Dora — His children — A keeper of Christ-
mas — As host — A delightful dinner-party — A day at Gad’s
Hill — Unexpected callers — The closing scene . .15

iai

CONTENTS.

Ill

His Literary Life

PAGE

Striking proof of his popularity — Rapidity of his success —
Associations with Bentley — Association with Macrone —
Methods of work — His accuracy — Favourite ink — Absorp-
tion in his characters — The looking-glass — Gift for nomen-
clature — His 44 bark ” and his “ bite ’’-—Puzzling the
Quidnuncs — 44 Boz ” and blacking — 44 Boz ” and Boswell
— Biblical allusions — Eton — Plagiarism and imitation-
Characters classified — 44 Making allowances ” — Art of
character-drawing — Sam Weller’s 44 originals ” — Other
identifications — Portraits in Nicholas Nicklcby — A curious
error — Blank verse for prose — Death of Little Nell — In
quest of 44 copy ” — Domhey and Son — Bleak House — .4
Tale of Two Cities — Great Expectations — Tom Tiddler s
Ground — Edwin Drood — Attempts to solve the mystery —

Mr. Fildes and the secret — The fatal watch— Original of
Mr. Tope — Recovered writings — Dickens and the Daily
News — John Dickens as chief reporter — Daily News
Jubilee recollections— The lirst number — Dickens and
Punch — As magazine editor— Dickens's 44 Young Men ”

— Office relics — As a poet — Hymn of the Wiltshire
Labourers — As a literary critic — Dickens and the writing
of biography . . . . . .36

On the Platform

44 Took the country by storm ’’—Enthusiasm in London —
Affection shown in the Provinces — 44 Astounding returns ”
— Third tour — A private rehearsal — Aberdonian caution
— A mistake at Birmingham— The English climate— Irish
enthusiasm — A first night in Philadelphia — Farewell to
New York — Financial returns in America — Platform ap-
purtenances — Vividness of his impersonations — A com-
pany in himself — Little Dorn bey and Toots — Farewell —
Forster’s scruples overruled — How Dickens 44 killed
himself ” — And why ? .

CONTENTS.

Dickens and the Stage

PAGE

Tho carpenter’s lament — Love of the theatre — At the old
Royalty — Mrs. Cowden-Clarke’s recollections — Eriergy
at rehearsal — As Justice Shallow — The Doctor and La
Fleur — Captain Bobadil — Flexible — Mr.. Snobbington —

A Gamp-like character — Tho old lighthouse-man — As stage
manager — The Queen and Dickens — “ A budding Con-
greve ” — His “ day-dream ” — The stage in the novels—

The novels on the stage — Nickleby and Oliver Twist —

The Christmas Carol — The Cricket on the Hearth — Recollec-
tions of u G. A. S.” — Edwin Brood — American dramatisa-
tions— A friend of the actor . . . .97

On his Travels

In his best French ” — In a “ pink jail ” — Travelling letters —
English a la Weller — A visit to Victor Hugo — Beaucourt-
Mutuel — Tragic holiday incident — First visit to America
— Well worth the Hogging — Coolness in peril — Advent-
ure in a snowstorm — After twenty-five years — Anglo-
American relations — As a pedestrian — Mistaken for a
“smasher” — A slumming expedition — An impromptu
hornpipe — “ The tables turned ” — Staplehurst railway
accident . . . . . . .126

VII

On the Continent

In Italy — Switzerland — Boulogne — Paris — Old-fashioned

engravings — Continental popularity . . . 142

CONTENTS.

VIII

Personal Characteristics

PACE

Punctuality and method — Seaside reveries — Dandyisms —
Dickens’s beard — Popularity and the pin— “ Emperor of
Cheerfulness” — His unfailing “ gaiete de coeur ” —
Magical presence — Thackeray and Dickens : A contrast —

“ TheChief ” — “ Pet ” theories— Powers of observation —

A lover of cricket — An abstemious “ bibber ” — Teetotal-
ism in fairyland — “ A grievous mistake” — Favourite books
— At the Zoo — Dickens and Thackeray : more contrasts —
Dickens and “ The UpperTen ” — Freedom from jealousy —

Taste in home decoration— Vexed ! — Love of the “ Old
Songs ” — As a counsellor — His generosity — Doing good
by stealth — As a believer — Attitude to Nonconformity — •
Views of spiritualism — Sense of the ugl v — And the beauti-
ful — Appreciation of pictures — Love of flowers — On
“materialism” in progress — As a speaker — His method
of speech-making — His rule of life . . . . 149

Among his Friends

Forster: the “ Ilarbitrary Gent” — Thackeray: the Yates
quarrel — The author of Rah and his Friends — Douglas
Jerrold — Thomas Hood — Mark Lemon — John Leech —
Daniel Maclise — Robert Browning — Martin Tupper —
Edward FitzGerald — The Carlyles — Charles Whitehead
— .James Payn — Georgo Augustus Sala— G. A. Storey —

Mrs. Trollope — Samuel Carter Hail — Miss I^aura Fris-
well — George Cruikshank — Hans Andersen — Julius May-
bew — John Motley — Sir Joseph Crowe — Lord Daralay —

Bret Harte — Disraeli — Landseer — George Dolby — A
touching compliment-- His work for his brother authors
— Guild of LiteratureandArt — Byron’sfluto — Mementoes. 173

CONTENTS.

vii

As a Social Reformer

PAGE

Mr. Fitzgerald’s summing up — On public executions — An Ad-
ministrative reformer — A social reformer — Defence of the
weak — The practical side of charity — A friend of the slum
child — As educational reformer — A Corn Law reformer —
Against slavery — Against “Stigginsism ” . . . 218

His Homes and Haunts

A general survey — His birthplace — No. 4 Gower Street North —
Somers Town — The AdeHhi — Furnival’s Inn — Strand —
Doughty Street -Elm Cottage, Petersham — Devonshire
Terrace — Tavistock House — Fort House, Broadstairs —
Folkestone — Boulogne — Genoa --Gad’s Hill — Rochester —
Gravesend ...... 228

XII

Dickens’s London . . . 248

XIII

The Inns of Dickens

The Boot — Bull Inn, Rochester — Fox under the Hill — George
and Vulture — Golden Cross Hotel — King’s Head, Barnard
Cast le — Old Leather Bottle, Cobharn — Magpie and Stump
— Maypole Inn, Chigwoll — Red Lion, Whitehall — Sara-
cen’s Head, Snow Hill — Saracen’s Head, To wees ter — Sol’s
Arms — Spaniards — Two Brewers — Unicorn, , Bowes —
White Hart — White Horse Cellars— Woods’ Hotel . 255

VU1

CONTENTS.

NIV

Scenes of the Novels and Stories

PAOB

The Dover Road — Portsmouth Road — Hertfordshire—
Rochester — Pickwickian scenes — Pyrcroft House —
Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire schools — The Old
Curiosity Shop — Eden — A Dombey landmark — David
Copper field — Bleak House landmarks — Great Expecta-
tions — Our Mutual Friend — George Silverman's Explana-
tion — The Mitre and The Crozier .... 2G5

DrcKENs in Contemporary Criticism

General — Sketches by Boz — Pickwick —Oliver Twist — Nicholas
Nickleby — Master Humphrey a Clock — Barnaby Rudge —
American Notes — American Notes and Martin Chuzzhwit
— Martin Chuzzlewit — A Christmas Carol — The Chimes -
Battle of Life — Pictures from Italy — Dombey and Son
— David Copper field — Bleak House — Hard Times — Little
Dorrit — A Tale of Two Cities — Great Expectations — Our
Mutual Friend — Edwin Drood .... 285

XVI

The Praise of Dickens

Anthony Trollope — .Moncure D. Conway — Dean Hole — James
Payn — Algernon Swinburne — W. S. Lilly — David Christie
Murray — Robert Buchanan — George Gissing — Comyns
Carr — Theodore Watts Dunton — Andrew Lang — Jerome
K. Jerome — W. H. Helm — G. K. Chesterton — T. P.
O’Connor — The childlike character of Dickens’s genius —
Tributes in brief — A French appreciation . . 329

CONTENTS.

XVII

Poetical Tributes and Memorial Verses

PAGB

Father Prout to “ Boz ” — Hon. Caroline Norton — Thomas Hood
~W. W. G.-~ T. W. Talfourd — John Forster — James
Ballantine — Leigh Hunt — F. J. Parmentier — “ Orpheus
C. Kerr ” — E. J. Milliken — F. T. P. — Bret Harfce — Charles
Kent — Richard Stoddart — Celia Crespi— Coulson Ker-
nahan — W. Edwardes-Sprange — A. C. Swinburne . 349

XVIII

Miscellanea

Dickens and Punch — Frith’s portrait of Dickens — The Maclise
portrait — Mr. Williamson’s collection — Sales of Dickens
— Dickens in French — V >pularity in Japan — Guildhall
Library ....... 373

GUIDE TO THE NOVELS

Synopses of tiie Stories— Casts of Characters, with
Quotations from Dickens — Alphabetical List of
all Characters in all the Novels, Stories, and
Sketches . . . . . .391

CHRONOLOGY

Complete Chronological Record of all Events of any
Importance in the Life and Literary Career of
Charles Dickens . ..... 585

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Record of all the Principal and Miscellaneous
Writings of Dickens arranged in Chronological
Order ....... 595

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Dickens at Nineteen, by Uwins . . . . .2

Dickens at Twenty, by Alexander . . . .2

Dickens in 1830 . ...... 6

Dickens in 1838, by Lawrence . . . . 0

Dickens in 1839, by Maclise . . . . .11

John Dickens, Father of the Novelist . . . .10

Mrs. John Dickens . . . . . .16

John Dickens, Father of the Novelist, by Jackson . . 22

Mrs. Charles Dickens in 1846, by Maclise . . .22

Dickens in 1841, by D’Orsay . . . . .27

Dickens, his Wife, and Sister in 1843, by Maclise . . 29

Dickens in 1842, by Lane . , . . .32

Dickens in 1844, by Gillies . . . . .32

The Empty Chair at Gad’s Hill, by Fildes . , .35

Dickens at Tavistock House, 1854, by Ward . . .39

Dickens in 1856, by Scheffer . . , . .45

Dickens in 1859, by Frit li . . . . .53

Dickens in 1861, by Par kes . . . . . G7

Facsimile of Dickens’s Handwriting . . . .73

Dickens in 1802, from photo . . . . .81

Dickens as a Public Reader, from photo . . .91

Dickens in Every Man in Ills Humour , by Leslie . . 98

Dickons as Sir Charles Coldstream, by Egg . . . 105

Joseph Jefferson in The Cricket on the Hearth . . .Ill

William Burton in D ambry and Son . . . .115

Harry Miller in A Talc oj Two Cities . , . . 119

Bijou Heron in Nicholas Nickleby .... 121

Dickens in 1808, by Eytinge . . . . .135

A French Caricature of Dickens .... 145

Dickens in 1868, from photo . . . f . . 155

Dickens in 1870, from photo ..... 169

Dickens reading The Chimes , by Maclise . * . .190

Xll

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Dickens’s Birthplace, by Bracldon .... 231

Fort House, Broadstairs ..... 237

Some of Dickens's London Homes —

The House, Fumival’s Inn ..... 239

No. 48 Doughty Street ..... 239

Tavistock House ...... 239

No. 5 Hyde Park Place ..... 239

Gad’s Hill House, Rochester, by Braddon . . . 242

Gad’s Hill House, from photo ..... 245

No. 1 Devonshire Terrace, by Macliso . . . .245

Pvrcroft House ....... 2G8

44 Oliver Twist’s Window,” interior . . . .271

44 Oliver Twist’s Window,” exterior .... 273

44 Little Nell’s Cottage,” Shropshire .... 275

Tong Church, Shropshire . . . . .276

Interior of Tong Church . . . . .278

Ancient Tombs in Tong Church . .... 281

The Keep, Rochester Castle, by Braddon . . . 280

Eastgate, Rochester, by Braddon .... 297

Watt’s Charity, Rochester, by Braddon . . . 307

“ An Re voir ! ” by Proctor ..... 352

44 * Henry’ asking for more ” . . . . 372

44 Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig ” .... 374

“ The Artful Dodger '* ...... 376

44 The Political Tilly Slow boy” ..... 378

44 Dombey and Son ” . . . . . 380

Dickens’s Bookplate . . . . . .381

44 A Scene from The Haunted Man ” . . 382

44 Fagin’s Political School ” . . . . 384

44 Bendizzy’s Ghost ” ...... 385

4# The Political 4 Mrs. Gummidge ’ ” . . . 386

44 Mr. Gl-dst-ne as 4 Pickwick ’ ” . . . , 3S8

44 Lord D-rby as 4 Micawber ’ ” . . . . . 388

44 Two of the World’s Greatest Women ”... 388

Dickens at the Age of Fifty ..... 392

Mrs. Charles Dickens ...... 586

Dickens in 1861, by Lane ..... 596

KEY TO AUTHORITIES QUOTED

The following is a list of the principal works consulted by the editor
in compiling The Dickens Companion. It represents no more than a
small proportion of the sources drawn upon for the present work, as
numerous quotations will be found throughout the text which bear
direct acknowledgment of their source. The books in the list sub-
joined are chiefly those which have been quoted from more than once,
and in order to avoid repetition of acknowledgment are indicated by
certain letters and numerals, to which a key for ready reference is
here provided. Names of authors and publishers are also given wherever
possible, so that the reader m;r> be able to refer to the original works for
further information, if that be desired.

A. The a Becketts of Punch. By A. W. a Beckett. London:
Archibald Constable Co. 1003.

B 1. Hans Christian Andersen : A Biography. By R. Xisbet
Bain. London : Lawrence A BuPen. 1895.

B 2. The Inner and Middle Temple. By Hugh H. L. Bellot.
London: Methuen & Co. 190.8.

B 3. Records and Reminiscences : Persona 1 and General. By Sir
Francis C. Burnand. London: Methuen A Co. 1901.

C 1. “ Recollections of Writers.** By Charles and Mary Cowden-

Clarke. London : Sampson Low A Co. 1878.

C 2. My Long Life. By Mary Cowden - Clarke. London : T.
Fisher Unwin. 1890.

C 3. Autobiography. By Moncure Daniel Conway. London:
Cassell A Co. 1904.

C 4. Celebrities and I. Bv Ilcnriette Corkran. London :
Hutchinson A Co. 1902.

C 5. Correspondence of J. L. Motley. Edited by George William
Curtis. London : John Murray. 18^9.

C 6. Reminiscences of Thirty- Five Years of my Life. By Sir
Joseph Crowe. London : John Murray. 1895.

D. Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading
Tours in Great Britain and America. By George Dolby.
London: T. Fisher Unwin. 18S4. New Edition. 1900.

xiv KEY TO AUTHORITIES QUOTED.

E. Literary Recollections and Sketches. By Francis Espinasse.

London : Hodder & Stoughton. 1893.

F 1. Yesterdays with Authors. By J. T. Fields. London :

Sampson Low & Co. 1872.

F 2. Life of Charles Dickens. By Percy Fitzgerald. London :
Chat to & Wind us. 1905.

F 3. Memoirs of an Author. By Percy Fitzgerald. London :

Richard Bentley & Son. 1895.

F 4. Bozland : Dickens's Places and People. By Percy Fitzgerald,
London : Ward & Downey.

F 5. In the Sixties and Seventies. By Laura Hain Friswell.

London : Hutchinson & Co. 1905.

F 6 & 7. My Autobiography and Reminiscences. By W. P. Frith,
R.A. London: Macmillan & Co. 1887-8.

F 8. Literary Eccentrics. By John Fyvic. London : Archibald

Constable & Co. 1906.

G. Bygone Years : Recollections. By the Hon. F. Levcson-

Gower. London : John Murray. 1905.

H 1. A Book of Memories. By S. C. Hall. London : Virtue & Co.
H 2. Journalistic London. By Joseph Hatton. Londoti : Sampson
Low & Co. 1882. , *

H 3. Memories. By Dean Hole. London : Edwalfcl Afpold; * 1897.
H 4. Charles Dickens : The Story of his life. By the Author of
The Life of Thackeray . London : John Camden Hotten.
1870. (Compiled, says Mr. Kitton, in Dickensiana , by
the publisher from materials supplied by H. T. Taverner and
others.)

J 1. Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria. By J. Cordy
Jeaffreson. London : Hurst, & Blackett. 1858.

J 2. A Book of Recollections. By J. Cordy Jeaffreson. London :
Hurst & Blackett. 1894.

J 3. Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold. By W. Blanchard
Jerrold. London : Kent & Co. 1859.

J 4. The Life of George Cruikshank. By W. Blanchard Jerrold.
London : Chat to & Wind us. 1883.

K 1. Charles Dickens : His Life, Writings, and Personality. By
Frederic G. Kitton. London : T. C. & E. 0. Jack. 1902.

K 2. Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil, By Frederic G. Kitton.
London, 1889.

K 3. The Dickens Country. By Frederic G. Kitton. London :
A. & C. Black.

K 4. Dickensiana : A Bibliography of the Literature Relating to
Charles Dickens and his Writings. By Frederic G. Kitton.
London : George Red way. 1886.

K 5. The Novels of Charles Dickens. By Frederio G. Kitton.
London : Elliot Stock. 1897.

KEY TO AUTHORITIES QUOTED.

K 6. Charles Dickens as a Reader. By Charles Kent. London :
Chapman & Hall. 1872.

L 1. The Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens. By Robert
Langton. Manchester : Published by the Author. 1883.

L 2. Memories of Half a Century. By R. C. Lehmann. London :
Smith, Elder & Co. 1908.

L 3. Mrs. Lynn Linton : Her Life, Letters, and Opinions. By
George Somes Layard. London : Methuen & Co. 1901.

M 1. British Novelists and their Styles. Being a Critical Sketch of
the History of British Prose Fiction. By David Masson,
M.A. Cambridge : Macmillan & Co. 1859.

M 2. Dickens’s London. By Francis Miltoun. London : Eveleigh
Nash. 1904.

M 3. Life of W. M. Thackeray. By Herman Merivale and Frank
T. Marzials. London : Walter Scott. 1891.

M 4. Through tho Long Day. By Charles Mackay. London :

W. H. Allen & Co. 1887.

M 5. Reminiscences. By Justin McCarthy. London : Chatto &
Windus. 1899.

0. William Blackwood and his Sons. By Mrs. Oiiphant. London :
Win* Blackwood & Sons. 1897.

P 1. Life *©f Bret Harte. By T. Edgar Pemberton. London :

€. A. Person. 1903.

P 2. Charles Dickens and the Stage. A Record of his Connection
with the Drama as Playwright, Actor, and Critic. By
T. Edgar Pemberton. With New Portraits in Character of
Miss Jennie Lee, Mr. Irving, and Mr. Toole. London :

George Red way. 1888.

P 3. The Recollections and Reflections of J. xl. Planche. London :
Tinsley Brothers. 1872.

P 4. Some Literary Recollections. By James Payn. London :
Smith, Elder & Co. 1884.

P 5. The Story of a Lifetime. By Lady Priestley. London :

Kegan Paul & Co. 1908.

P 6. Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe. By John H. Ingram.

London : Ward, Lock & Bowden. 1891.

R 1. Tho Lifo and Times of Sydney Smith. Bv Stuart J. Reid.

London : Sampson Low & Co. 1901.

R 2. Fifty Years of Fleet Street. By Sir John R. Robinson.
London : Macmillan & Co. 1904.

S 1. The Speeches of Charles Dickens, 1841-1870. Edited and
Prefaced by Richard Heme Shepherd. With a New Biblio-
graphy Revised and Enlarged. London : Chatto & Windus.
1884.

S 2. The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala. London :
Cassell k Co. 1896.

xvi KEY TO AUTHORITIES QUOTED.

S 3. The History of Punch. By M. H. Spielmann. London :
Cassell & Co. 1895.

S 4. London Letters. By G. W. Smalley. London : Macmillan
& Co. 1890.

S 5. Sketches from Memory. By G. A. Storey, R.A. London :
Chatto & Windus. 1899.

S 6 . Robert Browning. By William Sharp. London : \\ alter

Scott. 1890.

S 7. Literary Geography. By William Sharp. Pall Mall Publica-
tions. 1904.

W. The Real Dickens Land. By H. Snowden Ward and Catharine
Weed Barnes Ward. 'London : Chapman & Hall. 1903.

Y. Recollections and Experiences. By Edmund Yates. London:
Richard Bentley & Son: 18S4.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE AND
CRITICISM

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

The boyhood of Dickens belongs to the same region and the same
surroundings as his last hours. He was born at Landport, in
Portsea, where his father was living, in 1812 [Feb. 7], his
father at the time being employed in the Dockyard at Portsmouth ;
but it was in Chatham that he spent the years when he began to
observe. Wandering among the ships there, he caught that love
of nautical life which always : 'mained with him, and he picked
up his first acquaintance with those seafaring and longshore men
who stood for so many of his portraits. An even more important
moment was that when he and his father stood together and looked
at a house which was on a strip of the highest ground -between
Rochester and Gravesend. The house was called Gad’s Hill Place.
The father, observing the admiration with which the boy looked
up at the house, made one of those commonplace and time-honoured
observations of parents, to the effect that if the child would only
work hard enough, he might one day live in some such house.
The observation was probably forgotten by the elder as soon as
it was uttered ; on the younger it made one of those ineffaceable
impressions of childhood. It was that house which Dickens ulti-
mately acquired [1856], and it was there he lived the best days of
his later life. And it was there finally that, struck down pre-
maturely to the unconsciousness and senselessness which is death’s
prelude and intimation, he passed away [Juno 9, 1870].

He was but eleven when he left Chatham [for London], and
by that time he had got the better part of all the education he
over received. But a small collection of books was in an attic in
the house where Dickens lived. In David Copper/idd , he tells the
story of this room :

“ From that blessed little room, Roderick Random , Peregrine
Pickle , Humphrey Clinker , Tom Jones 9 The Vicar of Wakefidd 9 Don
Quixote , Oil Bias , and Robinson Crusoe came out, a glorious host to
keep me company.”

One of the results of this reading was to inspire in the boy the
first impulse to write. Ho wrote a tragedy, began to tell stories
well off-hand, and acquired a small reputation as a singer of comic
songs. He felt the hopes “ of growing up to bo a learned and
distinguished man.”

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

In London [in 1823] the family had to go to a poorer house ; they
took refuge in a mean, small house in Bayham Street, Camden
Town, with a wretched little back garden abutting on a squalid
court. Here Dickens was allowed to sink into a household drudge,
running of errands, helping to nurse the children, — the family
was of the abundance of the thriftless, — and polishing the boots of
his father. They changed from Camden Town to 4 Gower Street
North [where Mrs. Dickens attempted a “ Boarding Establishment
for Young Ladies ”]. Everything in the house had to be sold or
pawned to get food ; and poor little Dickens was made acquainted
early with that dark and furtive resort of the poor, at once their
Inferno and their Paradise — the pawn -office. In the end nothing
was left of the furniture of the house except a few chairs, a kitchen
table, and some beds.

Dickens had a relative named James Lamert, manager of a
blacking manufactory [Warren’s, in the Strand], and the child
was given employment under him at a wage of six shillings a week.
He was a small, sickly child ; lie was attacked by spasms at in-
tervals.

The two rooms in which his family were camping in Gower Street
were too far off to go home for dinner, so it had to consist of a
saveloy and a penny loaf ; sometimes of a fourpenny plate of
beef from a cookshop ; sometimes of a plate of bread and cheese
and a glass of beer from a miserable old public- house over the way.
But it was the suffering of the soul that Dickens again and again
dwells upon.

“ My whole nature was so penetrated with the grief and humilia-
tion of such considerations, that even now, famous and caressed
and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I havo a dear wife
and children, even that I am a man, and wander desperately back
to that time of my life.”

His father’s creditors refusing to accept the composition, the
family were forced out of the encampment in Gower Street, and
settled down in the Marshal sea Prison in the Borough. Now the
boy was handed over to a reduced old lady in Little College Street,
Camden Town, who took children in. He has given a picture of
the time, the words of which still have t he power to bum them-
selves into your soul, as the things they describe burnt themselves
into the soul of Dickens. Here is the passage :

“ I know I do not exaggerate unconsciously and unintentionally
the scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of my life. \
know that if a shilling or so were given me by anyone I spent it in
a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked from morning to night
with common men and boys, a shabby child. 1 know that I tried,
but ineffectually, not to anticipate my money, and to make it last
theweek through by putting it away in a drawer I had in the counting
house, wrapped into six little parcels, each paVeei containing the
same amount, and labelled with a different day. I know that I
have lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily
fed, I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

been, for any core that was taken of me, a little robber or a little
vagabond. My rescue from this kind of existence I considered
quite hopeless, and abandoned as such altogether, though I am
solemnly convinced that I never, for one hour, was reconciled to
it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy. I felt keenly, how-
ever, the being so cut off from my parents, my brothers, and sisters,
and when my day’s work was done going home to such a miserable
blank, and that , I thought, might be corrected. One Sunday night
I remonstrated with my father on this head so pathetically, and
with so many tears, that his kind nature gave way. He began to
think that it was not quite right. I do believe he had never thought
so before, or thought about it. It was the first remonstrance I
had ever made about my lot, and perhaps it opened up a little more
than I intended. A back attic was found for me at the house of
an insolvent court agent, who lived in Lant Street, in the Borough,
where Bob Sawyer lodged many years afterwards. A bed and
bedding were sent over for me, and made up on the floor. The
little window had a pleasant prospect of a timber yard, and when
I took possession of my new abode I thought it was a paradise.”

Release from this terrible life came through a quarrel between
the father of Dickens and his employer. He was but twelve, and
he was again sent to school. It was at the establishment of Mr.
Jones, which stood at the comer of Granby Street and Hampstead
Road, Here lie had some success with his pen among his school-
fellows. He showed, too, that love of amateur theatricals which
remained with him to the end of his life ; and he had so far out-
grown the horrors of the blacking factory and of tho Prison that
he had become a curly-headed, handsome lad, “ full of animal
spirits, and always up to mischief.” Then he entered a solicitor’s
office as a boy clerk. His father, at forty-five, had learned short-
hand ; the son determined to follow the example, with the result
that at nineteen he was able to enter the gallery of the House of
Commons as a reporter for the True Sun . When he was twenty-
four ho had begun Pickwick , and had become one of tho famous
men of the hour, and one of the immortalities of literature. He
was at that hour such a marvel of vitality and energy that people
were attracted and even a bit dazzled and hypnotised by his look.
u What a face to meet in a drawing-room ! ” exclaimed Iieigh
Hunt. “ It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings.”
And from that hour onwards it was unbroken triumph. — T. P.,
in T.P'e Weekly, December 20, 1902.

GLIMPSES OF TUB PROMISED LAND.

As a u very queer small boy ” Charles Dickens used to walk up
to Gad's Hill House — it stood on the summit of a high hill— -on
holidays, or when his heart ached for “ a great treat.” He would
stand and look at it ; for as a little fellow he had a wonderful liking
and admiration for the house, and it was, to him, like no other
house ho had ever seen. He would walk up and down before it
with hia father, gazing at it with delight, ana the latter would tell

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

him that perhaps if he worked hard, was industrious, and grew up to
be a good man, he might some day come to live in that very house.
His love for this place went through his whole life, and was with him
until his death. He takes Mr. Pickwick and his friends from
Rochester to Cobhara by the beautiful back road ; and I remember
one day when wo were driving that way he showed me the exact
spot where Mr. Winkle called out : “ Whoa, I have dropped my
whip ! ” After his marriage ho took his wife for the honeymoon
to a village called Chalk, between Gravesend and Rochester. — Miss
Mamie Dickens, in the Ladies ’ Home Journal (Philadelphia)

“A TERRIBLE READER.”

Robert Langton, in his Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens f
chronicles the recollections of one who was a servant in the Dickens-
family in Ordnance Terrace, and in the house on the Brook at
Chatham. Mrs. Gibson, whose maiden name was Mary Weller,
and who afterwards married Mr. Thomas Gibson, a shipwright, said :

“ Little Charles was a terrible boy to read, and his custom was to
sit with his book in his left hand, holding his wrist with his right
hand, and constantly moving it up and down, and at the same
time sucking his tongue. Sometimes Charles would come down-
stairs and say to me, k Now, Mary, clear the kitchen, we are going
to have such a game,’ and then George Stroughill would come in
with his magic-lantern, and they would sing, recite, and perform
parts of plays. Fanny and Charles often sang together at this-
time, Fanny accompanying him on the pianoforte. Though a good
and eager reader in these days (about 1810) he had certainly not
been to school, but had been thoroughly well taught at home by
his aunt and mother, and ” (added Mrs. Gibson, speaking of the
latter) she was a dear, good mother, and a tine woman. A rather
favourite piece for recitation by Charles at this time was 4 The
Voice of the Sluggard,’ from Dr. Watts, and the iittle boy used to
give it with great elTect, and with such action and such attitudes .” . . .
Little Charles Dickens lived in Mrs. Gibson’s memory as “ a lively
boy of a good, genial, open disposition, and not quarrelsome, as most
children are at times.”

In a note to Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, vol. i. p. 3, there is
a portion of a letter dated (bid’s Hill, 24th September 1857, to this
elTect : “ I feel much as I used to do when I was a small child a few
miles oil, and Somebody (who, I wonder, and which w r ay did She go,
when she died ?) hummed the Evening Hymn to me, and I cried
on the pillow — either with the remorseful consciousness of having
kicked Somebody else, or because still Somebody else had hurt my
feelings in the course of the day.” Mr. Langton expresses little
doubt that this singer of the Evening Hymn was Mrs. Gibson. Mrs.
Mary Gibson died April 22, 1888, aged 84.

HIS SWEETHEART.

At Rochester he was placed imder the charge of a Baptist minister,,
one Giles. In the playground ho had been recognised by his

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

affianced one, Miss Green, “ second house in the terrace.” This
schoolboy union he has often dwelt on. He later transferred its
locale to Canterbury, in Copperfidd. There Miss Green appears
again under a fresh name. Over thirty years later, grown-up and
famous, he went down to the old place, and records his impressions
in his touching little paper, Down at Dullborough. On his visit he
recognised some familiar faces, and went to call on an old school-
fellow — now a flourishing doctor — whom he found married to Lucy
Green, with whom he dined. — F 2.

NO ZEST FOR GAMES.

According to his own account, Soutlisea did not contribute much
to Dickens’s physical strength, neither indeed did Chatham ; for, he
used to say, lie always was a puny, weak youngster, and never used
to join in games with the same zest that other boys seemed to have.
Ho never was remarkable, according to his own account, during his
younger days, for anything but violent spasmodic attacks, which
used to utterly prostrate him, and for indomitable energy in reading.
Cricket, “ chevy,” top, marbles, ” peg in the ring,” “ tor,” “ three
holes,” or any of the thousand and one boys’ games, had no charm
for him, save such as lay in watching others play. — />.

BOYISH COMPOSITIONS.

Dickens was sent to Wellington House Academy, Granby Street,
Hampstead Road, when he was about twelve. Ho and his fellow-
pupils invented a lingo by adding a few letters of the same sound
to every word, and, by using this gibberish, pretended to bo
foreigners ; they also kept bees, white mice, and other living things
clandestinely in their desks. Charles took to writing short tales,
which he lent to his schoolfellows on payment of marbles and pieces
of slate pencil ; and he and the other boys mounted small theatres
with gorgeous scenery, the plays (such as The Miller and his Mm)
being presented “ with much solemnity ” before a juvenile audience
and in the presence of the ushers. It is affirmed that he did not
particularly distinguish himself at school, for ho carried off no
prizes. — K I.

EARLY GIFT FOR MIMICRY.

Mr. George Lear, a fellow-clerk of Dickens, at Ellis and Black*
more’s [the attorneys, of Gray’s Inn], says that he recollected the
novelist as being a mimic.

44 He could imitate, in a manner that I have never heard equalled,
the low population of the streets of London in all their varieties,
and the popular singers of that day, whether comic or patriotic ; as
to his acting, he could give us Shakespeare by the ten minutes, and
imitate all the leading actors of that time. He told me ho had often
taken parts in amateur theatricals before ho cafno to us. Having
been in London for two years, I thought I knew something of town,
but after a little talk with Dickens I found that I knew nothing.
He knew it all from Bow to Brentford .”— K 2.

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. »

A9 A REPORTER.

In 1835, Dickens was one of the eighty or ninety reporters who
occupied the press gallery in the old House of Commons. He
reported the proceedings for several newspapers, becoming at last
a representative of the London Morning Chronicle. He was then
twenty- three years of age, filled with an almost superabundant
energy, and throwing himself with eagerness into his daily work,
so that he was regarded with great favour by his chiefs, both for
his accuracy and for the speed with which he transcribed his notes.
Long afterwards he said : “To the wholesome training of severe
newspaper work when I was a very young man, I constantly refer
my first success.” Presently, when the Evening Chronicle w r as
established, Dickens was asked to furnish for its columns some
sketches in addition to what lie contributed as a reporter. His
salary was at the same time increased from five guineas to seven
guineas per week. These sketches, of course, were those which in
the following year were published in a small volume entitled
Sketches by Boz . — Lyndon Orr, in The Bookman (New York, March
1906).

A large sheet [the Morning Chronicle ], w as started at this period
of his life [1835], in which all the important speeches of Parliament
were to be reported verbatim for future reference. Dickens was
engaged on this gigantic journal. Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord
Derby) had spoken at great length on the condition of Ireland. It
was a long and eloquent speech, occupying many hours in the de-
livery. Eight reporters were sent to do the work. Each one was
required to report three-quarters of an hour, then to retire, wTite
out his portion, and to be succeeded by the next. Young Dickens
was detailed to lead off with the first part. It also fell to his lot,
when tho time came round, to report the closing portions of the
speech. On Saturday the whole was given to the press, and Dickens
ran down to the country for a .Sunday’s rest. Sunday morning had
scarcely dawned, when his father, who w as a man of immense energy,
made his appearance in his son’s sleeping-room. Mr. Stanley was so
dissatisfied with what he found in print, except the beginning and
end of his speech — just what Dickens had reported — that lie sent
immediately to the office and obtained the sheets of those parts of
the report. He there found tho name of the reporter, which,
according to custom, was written on the margin. Then he re-
quested that, the young man bearing the name of Dickens should be
immediately sent for. Dickens’s father, all aglow with the prospect
of probable promotion in the office, went immediately to his son’s
stopping-placo in the country and brought him back to London.
On telling the story, Dickens said:

“ I remomber perfectly to this day the aspect of the room I was
shown into, and the two persons in it, Mr. Stanley and his father.
Both gentlemen were extremely kind to me, but I noted their
evident surprise at the appearance of so young a man. While wo
spoke together, I had taken a seat extended to me in the middle of

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

the room. Mr. Stanley told me lie wished to go over the whole
speech and have it written out by me, and if I were ready he w r ould
begin now. Where would I like to sit ? I told him I was very well
where I was, and we could begin immediately. He tried to induce
me to sit at a desk, but at that time in the House of Commons
there was nothing but one’s knees to write upon, and I had formed
the habit of doing my work that way. Without further pause ho
began and went rapidly on, hour after hour, often becoming very
much excited, and frequently bringing down his hand with great
violence upon the desk near which he stood .” — F 1.

ms o\Vn recollections.

In a speech at the second annual dinner of the Newspaper Press
Fund, on 20th May 1865, Dickens, in proposing the toast of the
evening, made an interesting reference to his own work on the Press:

“ I have pursued the calling of a reporter,” he said, “ under
circumstances of which many of my brethren at home in England
here, many of my modern successors, can form no adequate con-
ception. I have often transcribed for the printer, from my short-
hand notes, important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy
was required and a mistake in which would have been to a young man
severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the
light of a dark lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through
a wild country, and through the dead of the night, at the then
surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. The very last time I was at
Exeter, I strolled into the castle yard there to identify, for the
amusement of a friend, the spot on w hich 1 once 4 took,’ as we used
to call it, an election speech of my noble friend Lord Russell, in the
midst of a lively fight maintained by all the vagabonds in that
division of the county, and under such a pelting rain, that I remember
two good-natured colleagues, who chanced to be at leisure, held a
pocket-handkerchief over my note book, after the manner of a
state canopy in an ecclesiastical procession. I have worn my knees
by writing on them on the old back row r of the old gallery of the old
House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to
write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we
used to be huddled together like so many sheep— kept in waiting,
say, until the Woolsack might want restuffing. Returning home
from exciting political meetings in the country to the waiting press
in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every
description of vehicle known in this country. I have been, in my
time, belated on miry byroads, towards the small hours, forty or
fifty miles from London, in a wheel-less carriage, with exhausted
horses and drunken postboys, and have got back in time for publica-
tion, to be read with never-forgotten compliments by the fate Mr.
Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts
I ever knew.’* — S 1.

dickens’s first love.

The Life of Charles Dickens was written in three large volumes
by John Forster, but that much was left untold is evidenced by

%&■

ClUlU.KN DICK K NS IN J N>9
After the jn/rt rail by Dan id Mucli$<\ It. A

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

many later writers. Very interesting, for example, are the facts
given in a publication of the Bibliophile Society of Boston, dated
1908, and entitled, “ Charles Dickens and Maria Beadnell : Private
Correspondence. Edited by George Pierce Baker, Professor of
English Literature in Harvard University. Printed for Members
only.”

At one time it was generally supposed that the Dora of David
Copper field and the Flora of Little Dorr it were Mrs. Dickens (nee
Hogarth). We know now that Dicker’s “ first love ” was Maria
Beadnell. When the two first met, Dickens was a youth of eighteen.
Maria was a little older. Dickens wrote to her, iX I can never love
any human creature breathing but yourself.” Two years after*
wards he was engaged to Catherine Hogarth, daughter of his friend
and colleague, the musical critic of that name ; and twelve years
afterwards Maria Beadnell married Henry Louis Winter.

Maria Beadnell was the daughter of John Beadnell, manager
for a firm of bankers, Smith, Payne, & Smith. Dickens was intro-
duced to the family by his friend Henry Kollo, who married Anne
Beadnell in May 1833, shortly after the letters here referred to were
written. These five letters are apparently the ending of a happy
intercourse of some months. In the first of them, dated only “ March
18,” Dickens declares that their recent meetings have been “ little
more thato so many displays of heartless indifference ” on her part,
and he returns to her some present, which he says “ I have always
prized, as I still do, far beyond anything I ever possessed.” The
original of this letter was returned to Dickens, and it is printed from
a copy retained by Miss Beadnell Of the other letters of this
series, one is undated, the others are dated simply u Thursday,”
“ Friday,” and “ Sunday,” but all were written within a few days.
There was apparently never any engagement, but that Dickens was
on familiar terms with the Beadnell family for three years or more
is Bhown by a poem, 4t The Bill of Fare,” written in the autumn of
1831. The manuscript of this, preserved by Miss Beadnell, is also
printed in the volume. In it Dickens characterises his friends,
including the Beadnells, and of himself says :

if And Charles Dickens, who in our Feast plays a part,

Is a young Summer Cabbage, without any heait ; -
Not that he's heartless, but because, as folks say,

He lost bis, twelve months ago from last May/'

More than twenty years later, a new correspondence was lateen
up, and twelve letters written to Mrs. Winter, in 1855, 1857, 1858,
and 1862, are included in the volume. The first of these letters
are full of thoughts of the past. In one, dated February 22, 1855,
he says :

“ A few days ago (just before Copper field) I began to write my
Life, intending the manuscript to be found among my papers when
its subject should be concluded. But as I began to approach within
sight of that part of it [referring to his early love] I lost courage,
and burned the rest.”

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

But after he had seen Mrs. Winter, Dickens seemed to feel that
the youthful romance was gone, and a different tone pervades the
later letters. He gave her a copy of David Copperfidd inscribed
“ Charles Dickens to Maria Winter. In remembrance of old times.”

After ten years of marriage, Mrs. Winter wrote to Dickens, and
received a warm response. He wrote :

“ My entire devotion to you, and the wasted tenderness of those
hard years, which I have ever since half -loved and half-dreaded
to recall, made so deep an impression on me that I refer to it a habit
of suppression which now belongs to me, which, I know, is no pari of
my original nature, but which makes me chary of showing my affection
even to my children except when they are very young. You are
always the same in my remembrance. When you say you are
toothless, fat, old, and ugly, which I do not believe, I fly away
to the house in Lombard Street . . . and see you in a sort of rasp-
berry-coloured dress, with a little black trimming at the top — black
velvet, it seems to be made of — cut into Vandykes, an immense
number of them, with my boyish heart pinned like a captured
butterfly on every one of them.”

When Dickens saw her ho was sorely disenchanted, and he was
cruel enough to record the effect m his account of Arthur Clennam’s
meeting with Flora:

“ This is Flora. Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad
too, and short of breath, but that was not much. Flora, whoSi he
left a lily, had become a peony, but that was not much. Flora,
who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse
and silly : that was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless
long ago, was determined to be spoiled and artless now. That was
a fatal blow.”

Maria Bcadncil scorned the young man who had such slight
prospects in life. When she met him again he was famous and
rich, while the man she had married w'as on the verge of ruin. He
was indeed unhappy in his own married life, and, strange to say,
Maria Beadnell was taken into the family confidence concerning
his separation from his wife. But she w as never to become any-
thing to him again . — The British Weekly of September 10 and
November 12, 1908.

PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES.

There was one schoolfellow of Dickens wito was an exception
to the rest, because the connection was continued as he grew up.
This wais one Thomas Mitton. They wore both law clerks together
during Dickens’s struggling days, and when the tide of success
came, Mitton, then a solicitor, was employed by him in bis various
difficulties. The solicitor, however, had but a struggling existence,
and was often assisted by his client. A large number of letters
that passed between them have been preserved. A selection was
published in tho Times in October 1883. From these papers we
learned, that when “ Boz ” had captured a triumphant popularity,
and was presumed to be “ coining money,” he was still harassed

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

and troubled by pecuniary difficulties. Some of these seem to have
come from his own family. Fame brought with it additional cares
for him. Attempts were made to make unauthorised use of his
name in connection with pecuniary transactions, which caused him
much inconvenience and annoyance. The attitude of Dickens
at this time towards those who caused him much embarrassment
did him great honour. It seems what is called “ hard lines,” and
this noble, patient being must have all our sympathy .- ~F 2.

IN IIIS FAMILY CIRCLE

Mu. “ Micawber ” Dickens is described as “ a well-built man, rather
stout, of very active habits, a little pompous, and very proud (as
well he might be) of his talented son. Ho dressed well, and wore
a goodly bunch of seals suspended across his waistcoat from Ids
watch-chain.” Readers* of Forster's Life of Dickens will recall how
Dickens tried to settle his troublesome pater in Devonshire, and
how enthusiastically he gloried in his acquisition. But Mr. Micawber
did not see it, and returned to London. The place is described
by Mrs. Nickleby, who hailed from Devonshire, in Nicholas Nicklehj
(Part ir., Chapter xxiii.), “I don’t think,” wrote Dickens, “I
ever saw so cheerful or pleasant a spot.” That unreasonable
Micawber ! — The Bookman (New York), vol. ii.

Mr. Dickens (the novelist’s father) appeared younger than his
wife did, and was a plump, good-looking man, rather an “ old
buck ” in dress, but with no resemblance to Micawber that I could
detect ; no salient characteristics that could be twisted into any-
thing so grotesque, except that he indulged occasionally in line
sentiments and long- worded sentences, and seemed to take an
airy, sunny-sided view of things in general. He avowed himself
an optimist, and said he was like a cork — if he was pushed under
water in one place, he always bobbed 44 up to time ” cheerfully in
another, and felt none the worse for the dip. — Mrs. Eleanor Christian,
in Bar , March 1888.

HIS MOTHER.

Dickens’s mother had a most sensible face, and in after years
lie grew to resemble her greatly. She had a worn, deeply-lined face,
evidently roughly ploughed bv 44 carking care ” ; but sue was very
agreeable, and entered into youthful amusements with much
enjoyment. His mother seemed to me to possess a good stock of
common sense and a matter-of-fact manner : I detected one little
weakness — a love of dancing. And, though she never indulged
in it with any other partner than her son-in-law, or with some
relation, Charles always looked as sulky as a bear the whole
time.— Ibid.

MRS. JOHN DICKENS, MOTHER OF THE NOVELIST

KN>. FATHER nb THE NOVELL?*!

From a pencil drawing

From a iMnicii draunno

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE.

AS A HUSBAND.

No biographer of Dickens can entirely avoid referring to the
cause of the unhappiness which overshadowed the last few years of
his marvellous career, and which startled the world at large as
much as it grieved those who were near and dear to him. After
twenty[-two] years of married life, Charles Dickens concluded that
he and his wife — the mother of his children — were not made for each
other. “ It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy,” he
explained, “ but that I make her so too — and much more so. Her
temperament will not go with mine. It mattered not so much
when we had only ourselves to consider, but reasons have been
growing since which make it all but hopeless that we should even
try and struggle on.” He claimed no immunity from blame.
In 1858 Dickens and his wife mutually agreed to separate, the
eldest son going to live with his mother at her express wish, and
the other children remaining with their father . — K 1.

One of the managers of the Morning Chronicle [1835] was Mr.
George Hogarth, a Scotch gentleman of education and repute.
It was Mr. Hogarth who made the arrangement for the sketches [by

Boz ”] ; and he took so j>crsonal an interest in the young reporter
as to invite him to his house, wuere Dickens presently became an
intimate. Mr. Hogarth had two daughters. The elder, Miss Catherine
Hogarth, was a lively, somewhat sentimental girl, and Dickens met
her at the psychological moment. They became engaged, and were
married in 1830. Mrs. Dickens was rather frivolous, somewhat
feather-headed, exacting, unreasonable, and impulsive. But also,
she was affectionate and well-meaning. So long as the young
couplo were equally inexperienced and equally childish, they were
very happy. But whereas Dickens himself necessarily grew up
and became mature, his wife never did so, but remained always
a rather doll-like piece of femininity, nearer akin f o a child than to a
woman. She remained always, in fact, her husband's child-wife,
and, in consequence, as the years went by, he became gradually*
aware of a certain incompleteness in his existence on the domestic
side. It was, however, not so much the attraction of another
personality as the incompatibility between himself and Mrs. Dickens
which led to a final break between them. This crisis was long
foreshadowed ore it actually arrived. His secret discontent took
the form of an extraordinary restlessness. He was unwilling to
remain long in one place. He made frequent journeys to different
parts of England and to the Continent, seeking perhaps, like his
Horatian exemplar, to escape from the atracura which, nevertheless,
dogged him everywhere. What he called in his letters “ an unhappy
loss or want of something ” began finally to affect his Creative
powers. It became less easy for him to write. He had to force
the note continually. The old-time zest was beginning to disappear.
Events soon brought about the logical results of such a state of mind.
Ho separated from his wife, with whom his eldest son, Charles,
thereafter made his homo. Amplo provision was made for Mrs,
Dickens. — Lyndon Orr, in The Bookman (New York, March 1906).

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

MRS. CHARLES DICKENS.

Mrs. Charles Dickens was a pretty little woman, plump and
fresh-coloured ; with the largo, heavy-lidded blue eyes so much
admired by men. The nose was slightly retrousse the forehead good,
mouth small, round, and red-lipped, with a genial, smiling expres-
sion of countenance, notwithstanding the sleepy look of tho slow-
moving eyes. Tho general opinion of mutual friends is embodied
in the remarks of one who had every opportunity of knowing the
real state of affairs with regard to his [Dickens's] domestic diffi-
culties ; but I am not responsible for these opinions :

“ I always pitied Mrs. Charles,” she said, “and believe she was
less to bo blamed than others. Where she was wrong was in
neglecting to assert herself in the beginning. She was indolent
and easy-going, and allowed herself to be gradually ousted out of
her proper place. It was hard to l>o repudiated for * unsuitability ’
by her husband, after being the mother of his ten children ; and to
be deposed and banished from her home, while his esteem and con-
fidence were transferred to her younger sister. She must have been
a most amiable woman, free from all mean jealousy, to have homo
so sweetly his preference for her sister Mary. From his own words
one cannot doubt that his romantic love was given to her, and ho
never hesitated to speak of her as his ideal in his wife's hearing.
When sho died, ho kept her portrait in the place of honour in his
study, and mourned as one who would not be comforted. It is a
mistake to have relatives living in the house with a young married
couple, and Mrs. Charles would have been wise to have taken warning
by this sentimental episode, lake the old woman who lived in a
shoe, Mrs. Charles had so many children she did not know what to
do, so sho weakly allowed herself to be set aside, while a more
energetic person managed her hou>chold and became counsellor
and friend to her husband and children. There are two species of
husbands difficult to live with, the genius and tho fool. Perhaps
the chances of happiness are greater with the fool ! ” — Mrs. Eleanor
Christian, in Ti-mfJe Bar, March 1888.

delane’s advice.

It had been obvious to those visiting at Tavistock Ifouso that,
for some time, the relations between host and hostess had Warn
somewhat strained ; but this state of affairs was generally ascribed
to the irritability of tho literary temperament on Dickens’s part,
and on Mrs. Dickens’s side to a little love of indolence and ease,
such as, however provoking to their husbands, is not uncommon
among middle-aged matrons with largo families. But it wavs never
imagined that tho affair would assume the dimensions of a public
scandal.

Dickens, tho master of humour and pathos, the arch-corn pellor
of tears and laughter, was in no sense an emotional man. Very far,
indeed, was he from 44 wearing his heart upon his sleeve ” where
his own affairs were concerned, though under Mr. Delane's advice

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE.

he was induced to publish that most uncalled-for statement in
Household Words regarding his separation, a step which, in the
general estimation, did him more harm than the separation itself.
He showed me this statement in proof, and young as I was, and
fresh as was then our acquaintance, I felt so strongly that I ventured
to express my feelings as to the inadvisability of its issue. Dickens
said Forster and Lemon were of the same opinion — he quarrelled
with Lemon and with Messrs. Bradbury & Evans for refusing to
publish the statement in Punch, and never, I think, spoke to any of
them again — but that he himself felt most strongly that it ought to
appear ; that, on Forster’s suggestion, he had referred the matter
to Mr. Delano, and by that gentleman’s decision he should abide.

There can, I take it, be no doubt that, if the matter was referred to
any jury composed of men ordinarily conversant with the world
and society, the verdict returned would be a unanimous condemna-
tion of the advice tendered to Dickens by Delano.

The two leading personages in this little drama are dead, and I
fail to see the necessity or expediency of recalling its various details.
It is not for me to apportion blame or to mete out criticism. My
inthnacy with Dickens, his kindness to me, my devotion to him,
were such that my lips are sealed and my pen is paralysed aa
regards circumstances which, if I felt less responsibility and less
delicacy, I might be at liberty to state. As it is, I ain concerned
with the man, and I shall content myself with remarking that it
was fortunate for him that just at this time Dickens was opening
up a new field of labour. To have concentrated his mind upon the
writing of a book, amid all this “Sturm und Drang.” would have
Wen impossible ; but into his public readings he could throw
ail Ids energy, and temporarily forget his troubles. —

[The only references to Dickens in Mr. Dasent’s Life of the great
editor of the Times are two brief notes to the effect that Delane
dined with Dickens on Oth May 1857, and was present with him at a
“ very pleasant party ” at Lord Alfred Paget's on 17th February
l Soft. J

STORY OF AN ATTACHMENT.

The London Tribune has come into the possession of some hitherto
unpublished letters by Dickens, and has been printing them as a
sort of epistolary serial. In these letters the names are suppressed,
and a good deal is left to be inferred : y£t they have interest as
uncovering an episode in the novelist’s life which has hitherto
been concealed from the general public. It appears that Dickens
in middle life conceived an attachment for a lady who was pre-
sumably ignorant of the extent of his admiration. For a long
time perhaps he himself was not aware how strong a hold upon him
this now sentiment had secured. At last a friend of his, whom he
had introduced to the lady, won her love, and the two became
engaged. Dickens had not known anything about the affair;
and when its culmination was announced to him in a letter* hia

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

agitation was extreme. Writing soon after, he described his own
emotion, and declared that his heart stopped beating at the news,
and that he turned white to his very lips. His subsequent relations
with the two were those of disinterested and unselfish friendship,
or, at least, this is the inference from the letters already published.
— Lyndon Orr, in The Bookman (New York), March 1906.

dickens’s love of children.

In the scattered reminiscences of Charles Dickens’s home life
two notes are always touched upon with decision : his love of
children, and his devotion to the celebration of ” old Christmas
customs.”

Dickens’s relations with children were ideal in character, and
Miss Dickens recalled that he was a most kind, indulgent, and
considerate father, always gentle to them about their small troubles
and infantine terrors. She remembered how he would sing to
them of an evening before bedtime, to their great delight, as, with
one seated on his knee and the others grouped around, he would at
their request go through no end of songs, mostly of a humorous
kind, and laugh over them quite as much as his small listeners,
enjoying them quite as much too. — K 1.

Dickens loved his children, and was beloved by them in return.
When his son Henry Fielding returned from Cambridge, having
gained a scholarship of £50 a year at Trinity Hall, Dickens met
him at the station and drove him to Gad’s Hill with their dogs
bounding by the side of the trap. About half-way on the journey
he suddenly put out his hand, and, grasping that of His son, with
tears in his eyes said, “ God bless you, my boy.” — It 2.

Dickens, between his two bright daughters, and he the
brightest of the trio — his trim, well-made figure in motion ; his
keen, ever-glancing face and laughing eyes : his gay, showy dress
— velvet collar, red carnation (invariable as Mr. Chamberlain’s
orchid) ; his showy, gleaming air, bringing light and quicksilver
wherever he was; his gay, cheerful talk; hearty laugh; everything
kept moving by him ; good-natured and kindly ; in all corners,
«md bringing genial fun and frolic — what an amazing man this was !
And yet all the time one of the most famous men in England !
And his modesty and retirement — never obtruding, always wishful
to listen and not to speak himself, to be second while others were
first, to laugh and n#t to cause laughs. . . . Affection, good-
humour, domestic enjoyments — these things were next his heart.
So when he wrote the same qualities were displayed . — F 2.

“ It was hero ” fat Boulogne in 1856], says his eldest daughter,
“ that the Plom (his youngest child, then about four years of age)
would be carried about in his father’s arms to admire the flowers,
or, as he got older, trot along by his side. The remembrance of
these two, hand in hand, the boy in his white frock and blue sash,
walking down the avenue, always deep in conversation, is a memory
inseparable from those summers at Boulogne.” — K 1,

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE.

On one occasion, when Mr. and Mrs. Dickens, their children, and
their few guests were sitting out of doors in the small garden in
front of their Devonshire Terrace house, enjoying the toe warm
evening, I recollect seeing one of his little sons draw Charles Dickens
apart, and stand in eager talk with him, the setting sun full upon
the child’s upturned face and lighting up the father’s, which looked
smilingly down into it ; and when the important conference was
over, the father returned to us, saying, “ The little fellow gave me
so many excellent reasons why he should not go to bed so soon,
that I yielded the point, and let him sit up half an hour later.” — C 1 .

LEARNING THE TOLKA.

When Miss Mary (“ Mamie ”) Dickens, the elder of the novelist’s
two daughters, was eleven years old, wo are told that she and her
sister (afterwards Mrs. Perugini) had taken great pains to teach their
father the polka, that he might dance with them at their brother’s
birthday festivity on Twelfth Night. In the middle of the previous
night, as lie lay in bed, the fear had fallen on him suddenly that
the step was forgotten, and there, in that wintry cold night, ne got
out of bed to practise it. On rejection, £>ickens himself seems
to have thought this characteristic of the intense earnestness with
which he applied himself to his occupations and even his amuse-
ments, for he said to Forster, in narrating the story, “ Remember
that for my biography .” — Daily News , July 1896.

IN THE NURSERY-.

In the North American Review for May 1895, Mr. Charles Dickens,
the younger, commenced his long-announced reminiscences of his
illustrious father, which bear the title. Glimpses of Charles Dickens.
The “glimpses” open with recollections of the great novelist at
his house in Devonshire Terrace. They picture him sitting in a
favourite rocking-chair which he had presumptively brought with
him from the other side of the Atlantic, singing comic songs in the
evening for the amusement of his children, among which ditties was
“ The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, ”in which Dickens, Thackeray,
and Cruikshank were supposed to have had each a hand ; besides the
song of “ Guy Fawkes.” Dickens’s love of the society of children
is also pleasingly shown in the details of his share with his friend
Clarkson Stanfield, the Royal Academician, in the construction
of a toy theatre, and the production of an original spectacular piece.

“ This, I remember, was a spectacle called the Elephant of Siam 9
and its production on a proper scale of splendour necessitated the
designing and painting of several new scenes, which resulted in
such a competition between my father and Stanfield that you would
have thought their very existences depended on the mounting "of
this same elephant. And oven after Stanfield had had enough of
it, my father was still hard at work, and pegged away at the land*
scapes and architecture of Siam with an amount of energy which in
any other man would have been extraordinary, but which I soon

JOHN DK'KKNS, FATHER f»K THE NOVELIST Mll>. CHARLES DICKENS IN 18-16

From an oil painting r>u John Jackson, HA. From a palntingby D. Maclisc, R.A.

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE.

learned to look upon as quite natural in him. This particular form
of dramatic fever wore itself out after the piece was produced, I
remember, and the theatre — much to my delight, for I had hitherto
had but little to do with it — found its way to the nursery, where
in process of time a too realistic performance of The Miller and his
Men , comprising an injudicious expenditure of gunpowder and
red-fire, brought about the catastrophe which finishes the career
of most theatres, and very nearly set fire to the house as well. This
extraordinary, eager, restless energy, which first showed itself to
mo in this small matter, was never absent from my father all
through his life. Whatever he did he put his whole heart into, and
did as well as $ver he could. Whether it was for work or for play,
he was always in earnest. Painting the scenes for a toy theatre,
dancing Sir Roger de Coverleyat a children's party, gravely learning
the polka from his little daughters for a similar entertainment,
walking, riding, picnicking, amateur acting, public reading, or the
everyday hard work of his literary life— it was all one to him.
Whatever lay nearest to his hand at the moment had to be done
thoroughly.” — -Daily News , May 15, 1805.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

In the published letters of Charles Dickens, which were edited
jointly by Miss Mary Dickens and her aunt, there are many allusions
to the former, and some of the most interesting were addressed to
his daughter while lie was away on his reading tours in the United
Kingdom and America. It seems pretty clear from references in
these letters that his dear “ Mamie,” or ” Mamey” (the ortho-
graphy of Dickens’s nicknames does not appear to have been fixed),
was of a somewhat delicate constitution. In 1854 Dickens was
greatly alarmed by a serious illness she had. Writing to Wilkie
Collins he tells how she apjveared at one time to be “ sinking fast,”
and how, no doctor being available, lie had had to prescri ix> for her
himself, and tend her in his “ great lonely house full of children.”
Next we hoar of the young lady l>eing taken ill at a Volunteers'
ball, u distinguishing herself,” as Dickens says to an old French
friend of ins, ” by fainting away in the most inaccessible place in
the whole structure, and being brought out horizontally by a file of
volunteers, like some slain daughter of Albion they were carrying
out into the street to rouse the indignant valour of the populace.”
Again, we hoar shortly after this, that Mary is in raptures with the
l>eauties of Dunkeld, but is not very well in health. The daughter
was well enough, however, to preside over her father's household,
and any difficult or delicate matters connected with it were in-
variably left to her judgment, in which Dickens had the fullest
confidence. “ My eldest daughter Mary,” he says, writing in 1858
[ the year in which ho separated from his wife], 44 keeps house with
a state and gravity becoming that high position, wherein she is
assisted by her sister Katie, who is, and has always been, liko
another sister.'* In another letter, he remarks : 44 My eldest

daughter is a capital housekeeper, heads the table gracefully, dele-

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

gates certain appropriate duties to her sister and her aunt, and
they are all three devotedly attached.” At this period Miss Dickens
was rather pleasing and intelligent-looking than pretty. The
father, however, thought that both his daughters were “ very pretty,”
and he expresses surprise that the elder one has not "yet (I860)
started “ any conveyance on the road to matrimony.” Nine years
later we find him speculating as to what he would do if he lost his
trusty housekeeper. 4 4 1 often think,” he says, “ that if Mary were
to marry (which she won’t) I should sell Gad's Hill and go genteelly
vagabondising over the face of the earth.” The event which Dickens
thus half hoped for, half dreaded, never came about, and his elder
daughter died Unmarried [in July 1896 ], — Daily News, July 1896.

DEATH OF LITTLE DORA.

An interesting communication which comes to me [“ A Man
of Kent,” in the British Weekly, June 10, 1900], from an American
source relates to the death of Dickens's third daughter, who
was bom in August 1850. and given the name of Dora Annie.
Early in 1851 both Mrs. Dickens and the infant were stricken with
illness. The child apparently recovered, but Mrs. Dickens was
still unwell, and it was decided that she should go in March for
a holiday at Great Malvern. She was accompanied by her sister,
while Dickens remained in London with the children. On Monday.
April 13, Dickens was making a sjicech at a dinner, and was told
when he left the chair that his child had died in a moment. John
Forster proceeded next morning to Malvern to fetch Mrs. Dickens
home, and he took with him the following letter, along with a
prayer :

Devonshire Terrace,
Tuesday mnrniwj , A t )ril 14, 1851.

u My Dearest K ate, — Now observe, you must read this letter very
slowly and carefully.. If you have hurried on thus far without quite
understanding (apprehending some bad news) l rely on your turning
back and reading again. Little Dora, without being in t he least pain,
is suddenly stricken ill. There is nothing in her appearance but
perfect rest — you would suppose her quietly asleep — but 1 am sun;
she is very ill, and I cannot encourage myself with much hope of
her recovery. I do not (and why should I say 1 do to you, my dear ?)
— I do not think her recovery at all likely. J do not like to leave
home. I can do no good here, but I think it right to stay. You
will not like to be away, I know, and I cannot reconcile it to myself
to keep you away, horster, with his usual affection for us, comes
down to bring you this letter, and to bring you home, but I cannot
close it without putting the strongest entreaty and injunction upon
you to come with perfect composure — to remember what I have
often told you, that we never can expect to be exempt, as to our
many children, from the afflictions of other parents, and that if —
if when you come I should even have to say to you, 14 Our little
baby is dead,” you are to do your duty to the rest, and to show

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE.

^yourself worthy of the great trust you hold in them. If you will
only read this steadily I have a perfect confidence in your doing:
what is right. — Ever affectionately,

(Signed) “Charles Dickens/'

AS GRANDFATHER.

Gad’s Hill Place was frequently brightened by the presence of his
eldest son’s children, and writing to Miss Milner Gibson on December
22, 1866, the novelist said: “ I can never imagine myself a grand-
father of four. That objectionable relationship is never permitted
to be mentioned in my presence. I make the mites suppose that
my lawful name is ‘ Wenerables,’ which they piously believe.”
And “ Wenerables ” they called him, much to the amusement of his
guests . — K 1.

THE NUMBER OF HIS CHILDREN.

Dickens the father had eight children ; “ Roz ” himself ten ;
while his father-in-law, George Hogarth, had fourteen. Add to
these cousins, such as the Barrows; brothers-in-law, Austins and
Burnetts; schoolfellows, like Mitton ; comrades, companions, such
as Kobe ; and we have a formidable crowd encompassing the brilliant
young author, with some, at least, burdening him. An amusing
story has often been repeated of the redoubtable Forster’s correct-
ing his friend, who had spoken of his ten children. “ Nine, my
dear 1 )ickens — vou have only nine.” u Ten ; and I think I ought
to know.” “ Ikardon me, my dear Dickens, only nine.” T he-
ron fusion, I fancy, arose from the little girl Dora, who died when
only a year old. It is hard to understand what Dickens intended
in the selection of names for his male children : Walter Landor,
Francis Jeffrey, Alfred Tennyson, Sydney Smith, Henry Fielding,
Edward Bulvver Lytton. In the admirable article on Dickens by
the late Italic Stephen there is a strange mistake. Enumerating
u Roz's ” ton children, ho altogether omits Charles the younger. —
F 2,

A KEEPER OF CHRISTMAS.

That Dickens thoroughly appreciated not only the religious
aspect of Christ mas tide, but also cordially approved of the social
festivities which mark that joyous season, is evidenced in his own
observance of them. No man entered more heartily into the spirit
of fun and frolic which characterised what is now usually termed
the “ old-fashioned Christmas.” 44 Such dinings, such dancings*
such conjurings, such blind-man-bufKngs, such theatre -goings, such
kissings-out of old years and kissings-in of new ones, never took
place in these parts before.” Thus**iin a sprightly note, be referred
to the particular Yuletide which brought forth the Carol . “ If
you could have seen me,” he wrote to a friend at this date* “ at
a children’s party at Macready’s the other night, going down a
country dance with Mrs. M., you would have thought I was a
country gentleman of independent property, residing on a tip-toj>

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

farm with the wind blowing straight in my face every day.” The*
occasion was a birthday celebration of one of Macready’s children,
and, in a letter to the famous actor himself, he described how he
and Forster amused the juvenile guests with wonderful conjuring
tricks . — K 1.

AS HOST.

In very many of my father's books there are frequent references
to delicious meals, wonderful dinners, and more marvellous dishes,
steaming bowls of punch, etc., which have led many to believe
that ho was a man very fond of the table. And yet I think no more
abstemious man ever lived. In the “Gad's Hill ” days, when the house
was full of visitors, he had a peculiar notion of always having the
menu for the day’s dinner placed on the sideboard at luncheon-
time. And then he would discuss every item in his fanciful humorous
way with his guests, much to this effect : “ Oock-a-leekie ? Good,
decidedly good. Fried soles with shrimp sauce ? Good again.
Croquettes of chicken ? Weak, very weak ; decided want of
imagination here,” and so on ; and he would apparently be so
taken up with the merits or demerits of a menu that one might
imagine he lived for nothing but the coming dinner. He had a
small but healthy appetite, but was remarkably abstemious both in
eating and drinking. He was delightful as a host, caring individually
for each guest, and bringing the special qualities of each into full
notice and prominence, putting the very shyest at his or her ease,
making the best of the most humdrum, and never thrusting himself
forward. But when he was most delightful was alone with us at
home and sitting over dessert, and when my sister wa:s with us
especially — I am talking now of our grown-up days — for she had
great power in u drawing him out.” At such times they would
discuss mesmerism and other magnetic subjects. One illustration
I remember his using was, that meeting someone in the busy London
streets, he was on the point of turning back to accost the supposed
friend, when, finding out his mistake in time, he walked on again
until he actually met the real friend, whose shadow, as it were,
but a moment ago had come across his path. — Miss Mamie Dickens,
in Ladies' Home Journal (Philadelphia).

A peculiarity of the household was the fact that, except at table,
no servant was ever seen about. This was because the requirements
of life were always ready to hand, especially in the bed rooms. Each
of these rooms contained the most comfortable of beds, a sofa and
easy-chair, cane-bottomed chairs, — in which Dickens had a great
belief, always preferring to use one himself, — a large-sized writing-
table, profusely supplied with envelopes of every conceivable
size ana description, and an almost daily change of new quill pens.
There was a miniature library of books in each room, a comfortable
fire in winter, with a shining copper kettle in each fireplace ; and on
the side-table, cups, saucers, tea-caddy, teapot, sugar, and milk, so
that this refreshing beverage was always attainable, without even
the trouble of asking for it. — A

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

At Gad’s Hill he (Dickens) lived in good style. Nevertheless, his
tastes were simple. There was no pretension about him, not a
suggestion of it. He was an infinitely witty talker, and full of
anecdote concerning people he had met and places he had seen.
At Gad’s Hill there was no sitting by the men at table for a while
ufter the ladies had left. A few minutes after the ladie3 had gone
Dickens would be on his feet leading the way to the drawing-room.
In his kind-heartedness he was very thoughtful of his guests, no
matter wdio they might be. — Mr. Frederio Chapman, interviewed
in the Daily Chronicle , June 25, 1892.

A DELIGHTFUL DINNER-PARTY.

I was at Gad’s Hill for one or two Christmases — not on Christmas
Day, but shortly after. I remember coming down with him in the
train, with his son-in-law, the faithful henchman Dolby, and some
others. We walked up from the station ; there was a crisp layer
of snow over the fair Kent country ; the air was fresh ; there was
a grey ::cJ£-tint over everything, and we could see the red light at
Gad’s Hill afar off, twinkling through the trees. The only incident
of the walk that comes back upon me was that Dolby, who was of
rather a brusque, rough nature, tagan to talk of someone having
been “ bashed” by someone else. “ Boz” caught the then rather
unusual word, and began to ask for a literal explanation. Any-
thing of this sort interested him. His sister-in-law had walked
dowm to meet us ; and so had the dogs. That night there was to
be a dinner-party, and various neighbours — some from a distance
— were to come in the evening. There was that agreeable sense
of something exciting, which is so pleasant for a guest in a country
house. That night our host was to give us an experimental trial
of one of his newest pieces from the readings, and he was anxious
to try the effect upon a rural audience. I was looking from the
window out on the wide, low-lying country, all white with tho
snow, and could see a carriage or two — a couple of black patches
moving along the road — far off. I thought of the “ moated grange ”
pictures. Here it was exactly ; “ Guests arriving for the Christmas
party.” They, in their turn, had their eyes on his cheerful red
curtains, illuminated from within, and giving promise of the snug
blazing fires, and logs, and maybe a comforting glass. One of these
vehicles was the Vicar’s, Mr. Hindle’s. There was also the doctor,
I think; then tenants of the nearest tall house, and so on. But
the snow kept some away.

A delightful dinner-party it was. How many are gone now !
I was beside the interesting daughter of the house — the attractive
“ Mamie,” as she was called — who has herself written some most
pleasing records of these joyous days. She had great personal
attractions, and much of her father’s observation, with a pleasant
wit of her own and a certain piquancy of manner. I always
admired her indomitable spirit ana independence. After dinner
we gathered in tho cosy drawing-room, which our host had added
to the old house. The retainers came in, and “ Boz ” took his stand

CHAHLK.S DICKENS, HIS WIKE, AND SISTKW IN 1843
From the pewit drawing by D* Maclise , K.A.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

at the desk, and began to read The Boy at Mugby, a keen and amus-
ing bit of satire on the then system of railway refreshment and on
the haughty damsels who presided and zealously served out stale
sandwiches and scalding coffee. He presented sketches of their
ways and doings in very amusing fashion. But, I remember, his
friend Forster, who was never very favourable to the readings, did
not quite approve of the topic. I fancy the subject was found too
local and special for general interest — and “ Boz” made very little use
of it in his professional readings.

A gay and hilarious night followed. The desk and apparatus
was cleared away, and there was proposed a series of amusing
games. Not a round game, as at Dingley Dell, but a very remark-
able exercise of the wits, which affected one very much as would
the performance of a clever, perplexing conjuror. “Boz” himself
was, of course, the central figure. He illuminated all with his quick,
lightning flashes and perpetual buoyancy . — F 2.

A DAY AT gad’s HILL.

Life at Gad’s Hill for visitors, I speak from experience, w T as de-
lightful. You breakfasted at nine, smoked your cigar, read the
papers, and pottered about the garden until luncheon at one. Ail
the morning Dickens was at work, either in the study — a room on
the right hand of the porch as you entered : a large room, entirely
lined with books, and with a fine bay-window, in which the desk
was placed 1 — or in the Chalet, a Swiss house of four rooms, pre-
sented to him by Fechter, which took to pieces, and was erected
in a shrubbery on the side of the road opposite to the house, where
he had a fine view extending to the river. After luncheon (a sub-
stantial meal, though Dickens generally took little but bread and
cheese and a glass of ale) the party would assemble in the hall,
which was hung round with a capital set of Hogarth prints, and
settle on their njlans. Some walked, somo drove, some pottered ;
there was Rochester Cathedral to be visited, the ruins of the Castle
to be explored, Cobham Park (keys for which had been granted
by Lord Damley) in all its sylvan beauty within easy distance. 1,
of course, elected to walk with Dickens ; and off we set, with such of
the other guests as chose to face the ordeal. They were not many,
and they seldom camo twice ; for the distance traversed was
seldom less than twelve miles, and the pace was good throughout.

Generally accompanied by his dogs, Dickens w r ould go along at
a swinging pace : sometimes over the marshes famous in Great
Expectations ; sometimes along a hilly, tramp-infested road to
Gravesend, skirting Cobham Park, and past The Leather Bottle,
whither Mr. Tupman retired ; past Fort Pitt, near which Dr. Slammer
proposed to take Mr. Winkle’s life ; down miry lanes and over
vast stubble-fields, to outlying little churches, and frequently to

1 Originally the “Bachelor Bedroom,” and under that title most
humorously described, with its various tenants, by Wilkie Collins in
Household Words .

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE;

a quaint old almshouse standing, I cannot remember where, in a
green courtyard, like an Oxford “ quad.” With small difficulty,
if the subject were deftly introduced, he could be induced to talk
about his books, to tell how and why certain ideas occurred to him,
and how he got such and such a scene or character. Generally his
excellent memory accurately retained his own phrases and actual
words, so that he would at once correct a misquotation. — F.

UNEXPECTED CALLERS.

Not many brighter summer days could have shone than the one
on which I first saw Charles Dickens. At the point now crossed
by the Finsbury Park railway bridge, stood a group of four or five
gentlemen. One, hat off to get the breeze, and stamping his foot,
was exercising his power as a raconteur . Another, noticeable for his
bushy hair and white trousers, strapped over his boots, appeared
consumedly tickled. His clear and ringing laugh reached us dis-
tinctly across the dusty roadway. As we [my father and I] walked
on I learned that he was Charles Dickens, the elfin-like little man
with the ashen locks, Douglas Jerrold. Dickens, whose peal of
laughter was never to be forgotten, on that radiant day of sunshine
grew a familiar figure ! 1 saw him act, I heard him read, and he

often passed mo in the highways and byways of the metropolis.
In the mid-sixties I not only again beheld him in the flesh, but
conversed with him. It was at his beautiful home, Gad's Hill.

Extremely fond of rambling in the country to places associated
with history and genius at the period mentioned, I persuaded a
couple of acquaintances [one was William Jeffery Prowse, a
brilliant contributor to the Daily Telegraph ; and the other a
young schoolmaster] to join me on a walking journey through
Kent.

On the third day after leaving London we found ourselves at the
Falstaff Inn, hard by Gild's Hill Place. One idea had constantly
cropped up while we watched the fields and warm green hills repos-
ing in the sunshine. Was there any possibility of seeing the novelist,
taking off our hats, and pressing his hand ? To the best of the
host's lielief Mr. Dickens was at home. We further learned ho was
everybody's favourite. Wo strolled again. A project seized us.
A brief interval at the inn, and a note was written. The words were
as follows : “ Three admirers of the genius of Charles Dickens
desire to pay their devout regards to him.” Then followed our
signatures.

“ Is there any answer, sir ? ” inquired the servant, taking the
note. “ If you please.” In two or three minutes the young
woman reappeared and said, “ Mr. Dickens will see you when he
has finished writing a letter.” Our impulse was to cheer, but feeling
took no more demonstrative form than shaking each other's hands*
Ah ! it was something if only to look at the outside of Gad's Hill.
It was from its quietude a fit homo for tho prose poet of huge,
roaring London. Tho silence around was only broken by the
chirping and whistling birds.

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE. “

We heard a footfall behind the open hall door, and Charles Dickens
lightly came down its four steps to the grass where we stood. He
wore a grey tweed suit and round bowler hat, and gave us with open
hand a greeting buoyant as his gait : “I am glad to see you ; come
to taste our Kentish air ? ” Soon, with a quite magical insight,
he appeared to divine our pleasant freedom for a few days from
London smoko and labour, and certainly appreciated the unaffected
homage we modestly tendered. His keen, alert eyes shone with
pleasure when one of the little party thanked him for an intro-
duction to people who had become abiding personal friends, among
whom were Betsey Trotwood, Sir Leicester JDedlock, Mr. Lorry, Kit
Nubbles, Arthur Clcnnam, Wemmiek, and Polly Toodle. Mention of
Our Mutual Friend , just published in complete form, led to interest-
ing conversation. It showed the novelist’s extraordinary topo-
graphical knowledge of London, particularly the suburbs. 44 Boffin’s
Bower ” gave the spur to the gossip.

“ I have often wondered, and said if the opportunity ever came
of a chat with Mr. Dickens I should like to know the exact where-
abouts of the * quiet, shady street near Pentonville,’ in which Mr.
Brownlow lived.”

“ Why ? ” quietly asked the novelist.

44 Having been born in that parish,” I said.

44 Then you can tell me where the mulberry trees stand.”

“ Yes, at the corner of Pent on Place, mentioned by Mr. Guppy
as his address.”

44 True,” was the answer ; “ might vou remember the number ? ”

“ No. 87.”

44 Excellent. Do you recollect any other places in Pentonville
described by me ? ”

44 Yes, the Crown Tavern on Pentonville Hill, where a young
mechanic and two lasses sat in the garden, watched the omnibuses
going to and fro, and afterwards went to the Eagle Saloon, in the
City Road.”

44 Perfectly correct. Both places were near Mr. Brownlow's
residence.”

44 I have frequently thought, sir, you have 1 ad special interest
in north and north-western London. 1 *

;; You think so ? ”

44 In the five famous Christmas Books beginning with the Carol
and ending with The Haunted Man , only one district is mentioned.”

“ Which is that ? ”

44 Camden Town, where Bob Cratch it lodged.”

4 ’ Where do you fix Boffin’s Bowser ? ”

44 In Belleislc, off Maiden Lane, near King's Cross.”

44 Yes, it w r as there. But as a North Londoner, the 4 wish is father
to the thought,* every quarter of London has had notice in my
writings, all parts have been described.*’

Here Jeff Prowso came to the rescue, and instanced what the
novelist had done for Southwark, Camberwell, and other places in
south London, and also in the central and western portions.

34 DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

The charm of the interview was in the ease and friendliness with
which Dickens received us and conversed. His cordiality and
genial temper gave us what Emerson describes as the healthiest
attitude of human nature — namely, “ the nonchalance of boys.”
He took us to the Chalet presented him by Fechter ; and showed
us the subway from the grounds, all the while chatting and laughing
as if we were intimate friends rather than casual visitors. When
hastening to depart, and fearing we had intruded, he gaily rejoined,
4< No ! no, I have greatly enjoyed your call.” At the gate of his
memorable home, he wished us severally such kind wishes that wo
could only bow, and felt unable to thank him.

We strolled on, and rested in Cobkam Woods. There never to us
had been such a summer day. The sky seemed bluer, the grass
greener, the sun brighter. Why ? We had shaken hands and
talked with Charles Dickens. — The late W. E. Church, in Household
Words , March 26, 1904.

THE CLOSING SCENE.

I remember very well that at the very last Reading, on the
15th March 1870, I thought I had never heard him read the
Christmas Carol and the Trial from Pickwick so well and with
so little effort. My readers know how soon the end came. He
was in town for our usual Thursday meeting on the business of
All the Year Round , and, instead of returning to Gad's Hill on that
day, had remained overnight, and was at work again in his room
in Wellington Street on Friday, 3rd June. During the morning l
had hardly seen him except to take his instructions about some
work I had to do, and at about one o’clock — I had arranged to go
into the country for the afternoon — I cleared up my table and
^prepared to leave. The door of communication between our rooms
was open as usual, and, as I came toward him, I saw that he was
writing very earnestly. After a moment I said, ” If you don’t
want anything more, sir, I shall be off now,” but he continued his
writing with the same intensity as before, and gave no sign of being
aware of my presence. Again I spoke — louder, perhaps, this time—
and he raised his head and looked at me long and fixedly. But I
soon found that, although his eyes were bent upon mp and he seemed
to be looking at me earnestly, he did not see me, and that he was,
in fact, unconscious for the moment of my very existence. He was
in dreamland with Edwin Brood, and I left him for the last time. ~
Charles Dickens, the younger, in North American Review , June 1895.

During the whole of Wednesday, Mr. Dickens had manifested
signs of illness, saying that lie felt dull, and that the work on which
he was engaged was burdensome to him. He came to the dinner-
table at six o’clock, and his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth, observed
that his eyes were full of tears. She did not like to mention this to
him, but watched him anxiously, until, alarmed by the expression
on his face, she proposed sending for medical assistance. He said
** No,” but said it with imperfect articulation. The next moment

IN HIS FAMILY CIRCLE.

he complained of toothache, put his hand to the side of his head,
and desired that the window might be shut. It was shut imme-
diately, and Miss Hogarth went to him, and took his arm, intending
to lead him from the room. After one or two steps he suddenly
fell heavily on his left side, and remained unconscious and speechless
until his death, which camo at ten minutes past six on Thursday,
just twenty-four hours after tho attack. As soon as he fell a tele-
gram was dispatched to his old friend and constant medical attend-
ant, Mr. F. Carr Beard, of Welbeck Street, who went to Gad’s Hill
immediately, but found the condition of his patient to be past hope.
Mr. Steele, of Strood, was already in attendance ; and Dr. Russell
Reynolds went down on Thursday, Mr. Beard himself remaining
until the last. The symptoms point conclusively to the giving
way of a blood vessel in the brain, and to consequent large haemor-
rhage, or, in other words, to what is called apoplexy. — Times ,
Saturday, June 11, 1870.

Ill

IIIS LITERARY LIFE

Replying to the toast of his health at a public dinner, given in his
honour at Edinburgh on June 25, 1841, and presided over by the
late Professor Wilson, Dickens said : “ It is a difficult thing for a man
to speak of himself or of his works. But perhaps on this occasion
I may, without impropriety, venture to say a word or two on the
spirit in which mine were conceived. 1 felt an earnest and humble
desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless
cheerfulness. I felt that the world was not utterly to be despised ,*
that it was worthy of living in for many reasons. I was anxious to
find if I could, in evil things, that soul of goodness which the Creator
has put in them. I was anxious to show T that virtue may be found
in the byways of the world, that it is not incompatible with poverty
and even with rags, and to keep steadily through life the motto,
expressed in the burning words of your Northern poet :

‘The rank is hut the guinea stamp,

The nnn\s the gu\vd for a' that.’

“ Not untried in the school of affliction, in the death of those we
love, I thought what a good thing it would be if in my little work
of pleasant amusement [The Old Curiosity Shop] 1 could substitute
a garland of fresh flowers for the sculptured horrors which disgrace
the tomb. If I have put mto my book anything which can till the
young mind w'ith better thoughts of death, or soften the grief of
older hearts ; if I have written one word which can afford pleasure
or consolation to old or young in time of trial, I should consider it
as something achieved — something which I should be glad to look
back upon in later life. Therefore I kept to my purpose, not-
withstanding that, towards the conclusion of the story, I daily
received letters of remonstrance, especially from the ladies. God
bless them for their tender mercies ! ” — S 1.

Dickens spoke to similar effect when addressing the “ young men '*
of Boston, February 1, 1842. He said :

“ I have always had, and always shall have, an earnest and true
desire to contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of
healthful cheerfulness and enjoyment. I have always had, and
always shall have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

philosophy which loves the darkness, and winks and scowls in the
light. I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches,
as she does in purple and fine linen. I believe that she and every
beautiful object in external nature claim some sympathy in the
breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread.
I believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I believe that she
dwells rather of tenor in alleys and byways than she does in courts
and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to
track her out, and follow her. I beliove that to lay one’s hand
upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long
forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and
most thoughtless : 4 These creatures have the same elements and
capacities of goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same
form, and made of the same clay, and though ten times worse than
you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature amidst
the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten times
better ’ — I believe that to do this is to pursue a worthy and not
useless vocation .” — S 1.

STRIKING PROOF OF HIS SL'CCEF .

During the winter of I860 he received a letter from a man in-
forming him that he had begun life in the most humble way, and
that he attributed his own great success in life entirely to the helpful
encouragement and animating influence he had derived from the
novelist’s works. This unknown correspondent had just inherited
a fortune from his recently deceased partner, and his first desire
was to render the novelist some testimonial of gratitude and venera-
tion ; whereupon he sent for his benefactor’s acceptance two silver
table-ornaments of considerable value, bearing this inscription :
41 To Charles Dickens, from one who has been cheered and stimulated
by his writings, and who held the author amongst his first remem-
brances when he became prosperous.” One of these silver orna-
ments was supported by a trio of figures, representing three Seasons ;
in the original design there were, of course, four, but the donor,
averse to associating the idea of Winter in any sense with Charles
Dickens, caused the artist to alter the design and leave only the
cheerful seasons. No event in the great writer's career was ever
more gratifying and delightful to him . — F ].

THE RAPIDITY OF 11IS SUCCESS.

Mr. James Grant, editor of the MonMlay gazine » in which some
of Dickens’s sketches lirst appeared, wrote some yearn after the
novelist had become famous: 44 Only imagine Mr. Dickens offering
to furnish me with a continuation, for any length of time I might
have named, of his Sketches by Boz for eight guineas a sheet, whereas
in little moro than six months from that date he could — so great
in the interval had his popularity become — have got a hundred
guineas per sheet of sixteen pages from any of the leading periodi*
cals of the day l *’ — K 1.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

ASSOCIATIONS WITH BENTLEY.

Forster describes the contracts made between Mr. Bentley and
Dickens as “ a network of agreements ” which had entangled the
writer and crippled his best energies. If Dickens were “ entangled
in a network,” so soon as he made complaint of his situation it was
the publisher himself who came to “ disentangle ” him and actually
set him free. There can be no doubt of this after the letter written
to the Times , December 8, 1871, by his son, Mr. George Bentley.

From this it appeared that Dickens, who was introduced to the
publisher in March 1836, by his father-in-law, Mr. George Hogarth,
had agreed with Mr. Bentley, on 22nd August, that two novels
should be written for the price of £500 each. At this time the
success of Pickwick w^as assured, as some six numbers had appeared.
On 4th November another agreement was signed by which Dickens
was to become editor of a new magazine, Bentley's Miscellany , at
a salary of £20 a month. At the close of the year the same firm
published his operetta, The Village Coquettes . But in the March of
the following year, by which time Pickwick was concluded, and
when he was receiving for a single story £3000, he felt that a new
one must be worth much more to him. There could be no question,
however, that he was bound by his contract, which had seemed
fair and advantageous to both the parties at the time it was made.
No change could be made except through negotiation. He was even
carrying out one portion of the bargain by issuing Oliver Twist in
the magazine ; the other story was to be Barnahy Budge . Dickens
now asked that he should receive £600 each for his two stories, and
in September 1837, it was settled that he was to have £750 for
each, or £1500 instead of the stipulated £1000. In February 1839,
Dickens declined to continue editing the Miscellany , and after many
pourparlers fresh arrangements were made as to the two stories,
Bentley agreeing to give £4000 for the unwritten Barnahy , which
was to be completed by the January of the following year. This
was undeniably liberal and accommodating on the side of Mr.
Bentley, considering that his contract had secured him the book
originally for £500. Dickens, however, now seemed disinclined to
go on with him on any terms, and the upshot was that the latter
agreed to rescind this agreement also, and finally resigned all claim
to the one story and its profits, as well as to Oliver Twist , for the sum
of £2250. Considering that the author was to receive £3000 from his
new publishers for six months’ use of the new story, with a share of
the profits, this seems accommodating enough. On the whole, it is
evident that the publisher made heavy sacrifices to please the
writer, and so far from “ entangling ” him, was accommodating
enough to set him free, even at the expense of his own interests. —
F 3 .

ASSOCIATION WITH MACRONE.

The Letters to Mitton, which seem to have escaped Forster,
throw an unexpected light on “ Boz’s ” early profits from his

DICKENS IN HIS STUDY - AT TAVISTOCK HOUSE, 1854
A portion of the painting by h\ M. IKard, li.A

40 •

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

works. There was a novel which ho had contracted to write for
Macrone, Barvaby Budge , or, as it was originally intended to bo
called, Gabriel Varden, the Locksmith of London. Macrone re-
peatedly advertised it as forthcoming, but it did not appear until
four years later, when it was published by Chapman & Hall. The
agreement on the part of Dickens to write Gabriel Varden is dated
8th May 1836, and the price stipulated was £200 for a first edition
of not more than one thousand copies ; the profits on extra copies,
all expenses being first deducted, to be divided. — F 2.

METHODS OF WORK.

One who knew him well says :

“ He did not work by fits and starts, but had regular hours
for labour, commencing about ten and ending about two. It is
an old saying, that easy writing is very difficult reading ; Mr.
Dickens’s works, so easily read, were by no means easily written.
He laboured at them prodigiously, both in their conception and
execution. During the whole time that he had a book in hand,
he was much more thoughtful and preoccupied than in his leisure
moments.”

Another friend has written :

“ His hours and days were spent by rule. He rose at a certain
time, he retired at another, and, though no precisian, it was not
often that his arrangements varied. His hours for writing w r ere
between breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to
be done, no temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to bo
neglected. This order and regularity followed him through the
day. His mind was eventually methodical, and in his long walks,
in his recreations, in his labour, he was governed by rules laid
down for himself by himself — rules well studied beforehand, and
rarely departed from.” — 1/4.

With the pains he took to perfect whatever proceeded from his
own pen everyone who has read his life must be conversant; but
this minute attention to e/en the smallest details had its drawbacks.
When an inaccuracy, however slight, was brought home to him,
it made- him miserable. So conscious was I of this, that I never
liked to tell him of a mistake in Doml)ey and Son , which has escaped
the notice of “ readers,” professional and otherwise, in every edition.
The Major and “ Cleopatra ” sit down to play piquet ; but what they
do play — for they “ propose to ” one another — is ('carte. — P 4.

No writer set before himself more laboriously the task of giving
the public the very best. A great artist, who once painted his
portrait while he w r as in the act of writing one of the most popular
of his stories, relates that he was astonished at the trouble Dickens
seemed to take over his w r ork, at the number of forms in which he
would write down a thought before he hit out the one which seemed
to his fastidious fancy the best, and at the comparative smallness
of manuscript each day’s sitting seemed to have produced. Those
too, who have seen the original MSS of his works, many of which

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

he had bound and kept at his residence at Gad’s Hill, describe them
as full of interlineations and alterations. — H 4.

A writer in a weekly journal (Weekly Dispatch , June 18, 1870)
says :

“ I remember well one evening, spent with him by appointment,
not wasted by intrusion, when I found him, according to his own
phrase, picking up the threads of Martin Cliuzzlewit from the
printed sheets of the half- volume that lay before him. This accounts
for the seeming incompleteness of some of his plots ; in others,
the design was too strong and sure to be influenced by any outer
consideration. He was only confirmed and invigorated by the
growing applause, and marched on, like a successful general, with
each victory made easier by the preceding one. It seemed hardly
to come within his nature to compose in solitary fashion, and wait
the event of the whole work. No doubt, this resulted in part from
his character as a journalist ; and so did his utter disdain of the
shams which it is the express province of journalism to detect and
expose .” — II 4.

He was extremely careful with his manuscript, altering this and
interlineating that, that often it was almost undecipherable. He
made exhaustive alterations on his proofs, too, and in fine, up to
the very moment of the appearance of a book, interested himself
in it. After getting hold of a central idea he revolved it in his
mind until he had thought the matter thoroughly out. Then he
made what I might call a programme of his story with the characters,
drawing up each chapter in skeleton form. Upon this skeleton
story he set to work, and gave it the literary sinew, blood, and life
of, say, a David Copper field or an Oliver Twist. — Frederic Chapman,
interviewed in Daily Chronicle , June 25, 1892.

ms ACCURACY.

In proof of Dickens's accuracy in all matters of detail, an eminent
medical authority assures us that his description of hectic, given
in Oliver Twist , has found its way into more than one standard
English work, in both medicine and surgery (Miller's Principles
of Surgery , second edition, p. 46 ; also Dr. Aitkin’s Practice of
Medici ne. third edition, vol. i. p. Ill); also into several American
and French books of medicine. A high medical authority assures
us, that in the author’s description of the last illness of Mrs. Skewton
(Dombey and Son), he actually anticipated the clinical researches
of M. Dax, Broca, and Hughlings Jackson, on the connection of
right hemiplegia with aphasia. — ll 4.

Pickwick is quoted in a grave legal work, Taylor on Evidence ,
where Sam’s examination is actually given in full. — Percy Fitz-
gerald, in Among my Books.

Readers of Dickens’s letters cannot fail to have been struck by
his habit of writing out the day and giving the date of the month
in words.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

HIS FAVOURITE IKK.

The present habit among literary men — especially amongst those
formerly connected with Household JKords, and more recently with
All the Year Round — of using blue in preference to black ink, arose
with Mr. Dickens. “ The Chief ” disliked the necessity of blotting
his MS. in the progress of composition, and on finding that a
certain make of blue ink dried almost immediately it left the pen,
he invariably used that kind ever after ; and thus began the fashion
for blue ink among London journalists . — H 4.

ABSORPTION IK HIS CHARACTERS.

Soon after his return [from his second course of readings in
America] I joined my father as private secretary and sub-editor
of All the Year Round, and almost my very first experience of work
with him was connected with the new reading which he now had
strongly in his mind — that of the Sikes and Nancy murder. We
were alone together at Gad’s Hill, I remember, and I was sitting,
with doors and windows open, one bright, clear, still, warm autumn
day, in the library, engaged upon a mass of papers, as to which I
had to report to him later in the day. Where he was I did not
know, but, supposing him to be in the Swiss chalet, over in the
shrubbery, across the road, took advantage of having the place to
myself, and went steadily on with my work. Presently I heard a
noise as if a tremendous row were going on outside, and as if two
people were engaged in a violent altercation or quarrel, which threat-
ened serious results to somebody. Ours being a country constantly
infested with tramps, I looked upon the disturbance at first as merely
one of the usual domestic incidents of tramp life arising out of some
nomadic gentleman beating his wife up our lane, as was quite the
common custom, and gave it hardly a moment's attention. Pre-
sently the noise came again, and yet again, worse than before, until
I thought it really necessary to ascertain what was going on. Step-
ping out of the door on to the lawn at the back, I soon discovered
the cause of the disturbance. There, at the other end of the meadow,
was my father, striding up and down, gesticulating wildly, and, in
the character of Mr. Sikes, murdering Nancy, with every circum-
stance of the most aggravated brutality. — (diaries Dickens, the
younger, in the North American Review , June 1805.

THE LOOKING-GLASS.

He was usually alone when at work, though there were, of course,
some occasional exceptions, and I myself constituted such an
exception. During our life at Tavistock House I had a long and
serious illness, with an almost equally long eonvaloscenco. During
the latter my father suggested that I should be carried every day
into his study, to remain with him, and, although I was fearful of
disturbing him, he assured me that he desired to have me with him.
On one of, these mornings I was lying on the sofa endeavouring to
keep perfectly quiet, while my father wrote busily and rapidly at

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

his desk, when he suddenly jumped from his chair and rushed to a
mirror which hung near, and in which I could see the reflection of
some extraordinary facial contortions which he was making. He
returned rapidly to his desk, wrote furiously for a few minutes,
and then went to the mirror. The facial pantomime was resumed,
and then turning towards, but evidently not seeing me, he began
talking rapidly in a low voice. Ceasing this soon, however, he re-
turned once more to his desk, where he remained silently writing
until luncheon- time. It was a curious experience for me, and one of
which I did not until later years fully appreciate the purport. Then
I knew that with his natural intensity he had thrown himself com-
pletely into the character that he was creating, and that for the time
being he had not only lost sight of his surroundings, but had actually
become in action, as in imagination, the personality of his pen.
After a morning’s close work he was sometimes quite preoccupied
when became in to luncheon. Often when we were only our home
party at Gad’s Hill, he would come in, take something to eat in a
mechanical way, and return to his study to finish the work he had
left, scarcely having spoken a \.ord. Our talking at these time3
did not seem to disturb him, though any sudden sound, as the
dropping of a spoon or the clinking of a glass, would send a spasm
of pain across his face. — Dickens’s daughter, interviewed, in The
Young il Ian, December 1894.

GIFT FOR NOMENCLATURE.

It is well known that the quaint surnames of his characters,
concerning which essays have been written, were the result of much
painstaking. Dickens, with a genius which might have justified
his trusting it implicitly and solely, placed his ci.ief reliance on his
own hard labour. It is said that when he saw a strange or odd name
on a shop-board, or in walking through a village or country town,
he entered it in his pocket-book, and added it to .his reserve list.
Then, runs the story, when lie wanted a striking surname of a new
character, he had but to take the first half of one real name, and
to add it to the second half of another, to produce the exact effect
upon the eye and ear of the reader he desired. — Daily Ncivs, June 11,
1870.

In his little book, Dinners with Celebrities , Mr. Howard Paul gives
an account of the origin of Chadband. On one occasion Dickens
and Mr. Paul walked from Stratford to Warwick, and, passing the
sign of a draper with Chadband on it, Mr. Paul pointed to it and said,
“ I thought you invented that name.” “ No,” was the reply of
Dickens, “ I took it from that very sign, and you are one of the few
people who have noted the discovery. I saw it a year or more
before I used it, popped it down in my notebook, and when I was
thinking over a name for the character I was then engaged on, Chad-
band seemed to fit it ; and it was a telling stroke, for people seem to
remember both the character and the name.” It would be interest-
ing to know what was the fate of that signboard. It. can hardly

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

be in existence, for Bleak House was published over forty years ago.
— Westminster Gazette , February 8, 1896.

his “bark” and his “bite.”

Here is an extract from a letter of Charles Dickens, unearthed by
the Publishers ’ Circular from its own columns forty years ago :

“ That is a very horrible story you tell me of. I wish to God
I could get at the parental heart of — — , in which event I would so
scarify it that he should writhe again. But if I were to put such a
father as he into a book, all the fathers going (and especially the bad
ones) would hold up their hands and protest against the monstrous
caricature.

“ I find that a great many people (particularly those who might
have sat for the character) consider Mr. Pecksniff a grotesque im-
possibility ; and Mrs. Nickleby herself, sitting before me in a solid
chair, once asked me whether I really believed there ever was such
a woman.

44 So , reviewing his own case, could not believe in Jonas

Chuzzlewit. 4 1 like Oliver Twist,' says , 4 for 1 am fond of

children. But the book is unnatural ; for who would think of being
cruel to poor little Oliver Twist ? ’ Nevertheless, I will bear the dog
in my mind, and if I can hit him between t he eyes, so that he shall
stagger more than you or I have done this Christmas, under the
combined efforts of punch and turkey, I will.”

Dickens’s bark in these matters was, however, we suspect, a good
deal worse than his bite. — Westminster Gazette , October 11, 1902.

PUZZLING THE QUIDNUNCS.

The number of Bentley's Miscellany for March 1837 contained
the following verse on Dickens :

“ Who the dickens ‘Buz’ c/m be
Puzzled many a learned elf,

Till time unveiled the mystery,

And ‘ Boz ’ appeared as Pickens’ self .’’ — K 1,

As, for the space of two years [1846], no serial story by 44 Boz >s
had been published, his numerous readers were puzzled to know the
reason, and various conjectures were circulated. The public prints,
too, commented on the situation, the S porting Magazine indulging
in the following amusing epigram :

“ It’s so long since Dickens has written a book,

That all the world's authors consider it rum of him ;

They hint that lie's dead, with a wink and a look,

If he's not, what the dickens on earth has become of him ?” — K 1.

Dickens suspended for a short time the writing of Pickwick owing
to the death of his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth. In consequence
rumour sagely declared it to be impossible that a work 4< so varied.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

so extensive, and yet so true in its observations, could be the pro-
duction of any single individual ; that it was the joint production
of an association, the different members of which transmitted their
various ideas and observations ; that one of their number, whose
province it was to reduce them to a connected form, was, and had
for many years been, a prisoner in the King’s Bench ” ! It was
likewise surmised that the author was a youth of eighteen who had
been bred to the Bar, and whose health had so seriously suffered
through his literary exertions that there was not the slightest
chance of his ever publishing another* number of Pickwick. — K 1.

“ Boz ” is the fictitious signature of a young man named Dickens,
who was for some years engaged as a writer in one of the London
newspapers, which he enlivened with his humorous and graphic
sketches. We are not aware that he is a native of London, but he
has at least, by his residence there, made himself minutely familiar
with the peculiarities of the people, chiefly of the middle and lower
ranks, which he has the knack of hitting off in a singularly droll
and happy manner. — Chambers's Journal , April 29, 1837.

“ BOZ ” AND BLACKING.

The story of “ Boz’s ” childhood is a highly dismal one ; but the
iron never seems to have regularly entered his little soul until he was
set to handling blacking, or rather blacking-bottles. Years later,
when he recalled it and wrote it down, he seemed to w r rithe in a sort
of agony. He told his friend Forster that he never could lose the
remembrance of those trials. “ No. 30, Strand,” was Warren’s
mystic figure, as “ 97 ” was Day & Martin’s. Little “ Boz ” was
not even engaged at the original great Warren’s, but at a relation’s
of the same name, who was trying to secure some of the business.
Warren and Day & Martin w r ere rivals, but with the latter was the
victory, for Warren is now extinct, in spite of all his ingenious arts,
the keeping of a poet, etc. If Warren is glorified in Pickwick ,
Day & Martin are also mentioned. His blacking was used at what
was in “ Boz’s” eyes the most important country house he knew f —
to wit, Dingley Dell, Mr. Wardle’s seat in Kent. Like his own
Mr. Dick he could not keep it out of his “ memorial i.e. his tales.
As he had well kept his own secret, I could fancy his smiling to
himself as he thought he was mystifying his readers. We can
imagine the bright youth saying to himself, as he wrote down the
words in Fumival’s Inn : “ This will puzzle ’em a bit in fifty years
or so — What can he mean by telling us these things about Warren
and Day & Martin ? But I know — its my ow r n little joke — even my
own people will never guess to what I am referring.” There W'as
something grim in this ; but it is the only solution.

In Pickwick there are several odd allusions to blacking and the
use of blacking. The entry of Sam on the scene is in an atmo-
sphere of blacking. We learn all about cleaning boots at inns —
they are ranged in rows, and under different categories. Sam worked
with such goodwill, we are told, that “ the polish would have struck

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

eavy to the soul of the amiable Mr. Warren ” (for they used Day &
Martin at The White Hart). “ Amiable ” is an odd term to apply
to a blacking maker ; or is it “ wrote sarcastic ” ? He probably
refers to the amiable ways of the firm — the giving of verses and
lyrics to entertain or induce customers. Nor did he content himself
with this stroke ; he classes them with a set of officials whom he
detested and ridiculed — to wit, Beadles. No one, said old Weller,
ever wrote poetry, “ ’cept a Beadle on Boxing Day, or Warren’s
blackin’.” At Dingley Dell almost the first refreshment or solace
offered to the Pickwickians after their walk was “ a bottle of blacking
and some half-dozen brushes.” And Mr. Pickwick’s boots were
blacked till “ his corns were red hot.” Even when writing, so long
after the event, in Little Dorrit he could not keep away from the
topic. The young Barnacle — describing some one, says : “ He was
a partner in a house in some large way — spirits, or buttons, or wine,
or ” — here one would think what a vast field of manufactures or
merchandise was open to him — but no, “ or blacking,” he suggests,
of all unlikely things in the world. It is a sad, piteous, and most
significant episode, which few but Dickens would have so heroically
struggled out of. — -Daily News , March 0, 1001.

It is a curious fact, and one to reflect on, that, knowing as the
reading world docs from Mr. Forster s book, how strongly and
cnduringly Dickens was affected by these sad times, we yet find him,
in nearly all his books, from the very first to the last, continually
recurring to the subject- of the blacking business. Taking his
works in their order of publication, I find he mentions, in his Sketches
by Boz , the shabby-genteel man in the Seven Dials who wrote poems
for Warren. It is mentioned twice in Pickwick , once in Oliver Twist ,
in Nicholas Nickleby seven times ; it occurs in the Old Curiosity
Shop , where Mr. Slum, the writer of poetical advertisements, is
introduced. In David Copper field it is veiled under the cover of
the wine stories. In Hard Times , where Josiah Bounderby brags
that tho only pictures he possessed when a boy were the illustrated
labels “ of a man shaving himself in a boot on the blacking bottles.”
In Little Dorrit , in Great Expectations , in Our Mutual, Friend , and in
Edwin Drood are said to be found brief, but unmistakable allusions
to this business. — L 1.

“boz” and eoswell.

Dickens was a great admirer of the immortal Life , and thoroughly
permeated with its spirit. It is not too fanciful to say that Pichvicx
is perhaps the only known book written on the same lines. Mr.
Pickwick was as rudely despotic as Johnson. His friends were his
“ followers.” Snodgrass kept a notebook in which lie entered the
conversation and stories. As Johnson had his faithful black servant,
so Mr. Pickwick had his trusty Sam. Both loaders travelled about
on coaches and stayed at inns, Mr. Pickwick went to Bath and
drank the waters, as did Dr. Johnson. Johnson had his Mrs.
Thrale, as Mr. Pickwick had his Mrs. Bardell. Mr. Pickwick

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

attended a review at Rochester, and so did Dr. Johnson. Winkle
somewhat resembled Goldsmith in trying to do feats, etc., and always
failing. Some of the passages in both books might be transposed
and the change scarcely noticed. Witness this: “The Doctor
appeared in pumps for a dance. ‘ You in silk stockings ! ’ exclaimed
a gentleman jocosely. ‘ And why not, why not, sir ? ’ said my
revered friend, turning warmly on him. ‘ Oh, of course, there is no
reason why you should not wear them/ responded the gentleman.
£ I imagine not, I imagine not, sir/ said the Doctor in a very
peremptory tone. The gentleman had contemplated a laugh,
but he found it was a serious matter ; so ho looked grave and
said they were a pretty pattern. k I hope they are/ said Dr.
Johnson, fixing his eyes upon him. ‘ You see nothing extraordinary
in the stockings, as stockings, 1 trust, sir/ * Certainly not — oh,
certainly not/ He walked away, and Dr. Johnson’s countenance
assumed its customary benign expression.” This occurs, not in
Boswell, but in Pickwick , with a slight change of names.

Sam’s well-known story of the person who killed himself by eating
three shillings’ worth of crumpets — about three dozen — was taken
from Boswell. In his book we are told of a gentleman who, having
resolved to shoot himself, ate three buttered muffins for breakfast,
knowing that he should not be troubled with indigestion. The
story, however, is said by De Quincey to be given by Darwin, who
relates it of a colonel who shot himself “ on principle ” and because
“ a muffinless world was no world for him.” “ Boz ” well knew his
Boswell.

In one passage “ Boz ” has attempted an imitation of the John-
sonian dialogue, which is really good :

“ Johnson : Sir, if it be not irrational in a man to count his
feathered bipeds before they are hatched, we will conjointly astonish
them before next year. Boswell : Sir, I hardly understand you.
Johnson : You never understand anything. Boswell (in a sprightly
manner) : Perhaps, sir, I am all the better for it. Johnson
(savagely) : I don’t know but that you are. There is Lord Carlisle
(smiling) ; he never understands anything, and yet the dog is well
enough. Then, sir, there is Forster ; he understands many things,
and yet the fellow is fretful. Again, sir, there is Dickens, with a
facile way with him like Davy, sir — like Davy — yet lam told that
the man is lying at a hedge ale-house by the seashoro in Kent, as
long as they will trust him. Boswell : But there are no hedges by
the sea in Kent, sir. Johnson : And why not, sir ? Boswell (at a

loss) : I don’t know, sir, unless Johnson (thundering) : Let

us have no unlesses, sir ! ” — St. James's Gazette , July 8, 1895.

BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS.

It should be said that Dickens was sometimes unfortunate in his
Biblical allusions. Old Weller’s jesting allusions to the “ New
Birth ” gave umbrage to religious persons. Almost the last page
ho wrote contained something that brought him protest. A very
awkward phrase in Little Dorrit fortunately escaped notice. He had

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

slipped into an allusion to “ baptismal water on the brain,” and
forgot to remove it, which he felt was certain to be mischievously
perverted and used against him. “I wrote it in the text,” he
said, “ more as a joke, which Forster should see in the proof.”
Forster did see it, and hurriedly came to him in infinite alarm. “ The
moment I saw it I knew what it was, and had already taken it out
in my mind.” When the revise was before him, “ he most carefully
took it out,” but in fact it somehow remained. — F 2.

ETON.

I had already several friends at Cookesley’s, and I soon had several
more, among whom I may count the Rev. Gifford Cookesley, my
tutor, as one of the best, and so he remained long after we both of
us, master and pupil, left Eton for good. One of my tutor’s pupils
was Charles Dickens, eldest son of the great novelist, and it has ever
been to me a matter of curiosity to know why Dickens, who went
out of his way to learn so much and to write so admirably about
all sorts of schools, never interested himself in Eton, where his
eldest son received his education. I do not remember any allusion,
of any sort, to Eton in any of Ins works. If Disraeli, who had
nothing whatever to do with the school, could so cleverly sketch
Eton life in Coning shy as to make that novel one of the first re-
commended to an Etonian as absolutely correct in every detail,
as far as it went, how much more popular and of how far greater
value would have been an Eton boy, and Eton generally, as depicted
by Charles Dickens, who could have learnt every little detail that he
did not acquire by personal observation “ on the spot ” from his
son, who was there for full four years ! It is to me a problem.
Young Charles was at a Dame’s (Myddleton’s, I think), and my
tutor’s pupil-room was where he and ! used to m et, though other-
wise I saw very little of him.— Sir Francis Burnand, B 3.

PLAGIARISE AND IMITATION.

So great was the popularity of Dickens’s earlier productions that
various unscrupulous publishers issued works bearing similar titles
and having an attempted resemblance to the style of the famous
novelist. Mr. Kitton devotes more than twenty pages of his
valuable Dickensiana (K 4) to this subject, which is also dealt with
in Mr. G. A. Sala’s Charles Dickens (Routledge, 1870).

It is somewhat astonishing to find Edmund Yates, the most
faithful of Dickens’s henchmen and worshippors, so indiscreet as to
write a comic parody of the master's style — and in his lifetime 1
“ Boz” would, of course, have laughed at this ; but he must have
thought it scarcely respectful. The imitation appeared in a book
called Our Miscellany , and the imitation was supposed to be by
Charles Diggins. I was, however, more astonishea lately to find
that the genial and amiable Anthony Trollope had introduced a
satirical portrait of “ Boz ” into his Warden under the title of “ Mr.
Popular Sentiment,” which shows hostility. He particularly ridi-
cules “ Boz’s ” efforts to reform the Rochester charities — F 2.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Thomas Hood, writing to the Athenaeum (June 1842) on “ Copy-
right and Copywrong,” speaks of a conversation he had had with
a bookseller on a spurious Master Humphrey's Clock. “ Sir,” said
the bookseller, “ if you had observed the name, it was ‘ Bos, ? not
4 Boz ’ — s, sir, not z ; and, besides, it would have been no piracy,
sir, even with the z, because Master Humphrey's Clocks you see, sir,
was not published as by ‘ Boz,’ but by Charles Dickens ! ” — H 4.

SIS CHARACTERS CLASSIFIED.

An ingenious gentleman has compiled the following census
of Dickens’s characters. The list seems somewhat arbitrary, and
is misleading in several respects, but it is certainly of interest : —

Actors . , . .

Corporations (!)

8 Plasterer . .

. 1

Actresses . . .

Cricketers . .

6 Policemen . .

. 12

Actuary . . . .

Cripples . . .

6 Pony (!) . . .

. 1

Adventurers . .

Dancing Masters

3 j Pugilist . .

. 1

Aeronauts . . .

Detectives . .

12 Raven (!)

. 1

Alderman . . .

Editors . . .

4 Reporter. . .

. 1

Amanuensis . .

Emigrants . .

7 Resurrectionist

. 1

Americans . . .

Fairies . .

2 Sextons . . .

. 3

Apprentices . .

Farmers . . .

4 Showmen .

. 7

Architects . . .

Footmen . .

6 Shrews . . .

Authors ....

8! Fops ....

3 Spies . . .

. 2

Babies ....

Frenchmen , .

23 Surgeons . .

. 7

Bachelors . . .

10 Germans. . .

5 Swindlers

. 14

Barbers ....

Governors . .

3 Thieves . .

. 12

Barmaids . . .

Grocers . . .

3 Toadies . . .

. 10

Beadles ....

6 Invalids .

7 Tobacconist

. 1

Blind persons . .

Jews ....

3 Tramps . . .

Boarding - house

Lawyers . . .

35 Turnkeys .

.’ 0

keepers . . .

M.P.s. . . .

7 Undertakers

* . G

Boobies ....

Misers . . .

9 Vagabond^ .

. 8

Boots ....

Murderers

10 Vessels (!)

. 7

Brokers ....

Nurses . . ,

1 3 Vestrymen

. G

Circus people . .

Old maids . .

16 Waiters . . .

. 13

Clergymen . . .

Pawnbrokers .

3 Widowers .

. 3

Clerks ....

47 Physicians . .

15 Widows . . .

. 39

— Westminster Gazette , August 6, 1895.

It is computed that, in all, something like fifteen hundred char-
acters people the works of the great novelist. In Pickwick alone
it is estimated that there are three hundred and sixty characters.

“ MAKING ALLOWANCES.”

Nobody believes that the grotesque personages who figure in the
pages of Dickens are anywhere to be found in real life. His plan
was to seize upon some oddity of human nature, and invest his
puppets with it so completely that they can never open their lips

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

without betraying it. Whoever met with suclf a compound of
impudence ani wit in a shoe-black, or a groom, as we find in the
immortal Sam Weller ? It may have been our lot to know “ a
great man struggling with the storms of fate,” but where shall we
look for a man who is jolly in proportion as he is unfortunate, like
M&rk Tapley ? Who can believe in the actual existence of such
persons as Miss Flite and Miss Mowcher and Toots ? Gradgrind
ik' so practical that he ceases to be human ; Micawber is full of
maudlin sentiment and emphatic nonsense ; Mrs. Nickleby is
always parenthetical and incoherent ; Boythorn never opens his
lips without being intensely and boisterously energetic ; and Major
Bagstock always describes himself as “ tough old Joe ” ; “ Joe is
rough and tough, sir ! blunt, sir, blunt is Joe.” It would in the
last degree be absurd for a future writer to take these characters
as types of English society in the middle of the nineteenth century ;
and, to a certain extent, the same kind of allowance must be made
for the characters in the novels of the last century. ... I say that
this allowance should be made only to “ a certain extent,” for I
believe that the characters drawn by the old novelists are, with a
few exceptions, intended to be less imaginary than the creations of
fiction in our own day, and have a substratum of reality which is
wanting in many of the amusing characters of Dickens. — Novels
and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, by Wm. Forsyth.

ART OF CHARACTER-DRAWING.

I remember Mr. Dickens telling me that he was constantly receiv-
ing grotesque stories and suggestions of all kinds from strangers,
which, as they thought, were “ exactly suited to his gifted pen.”
Nearly all these were worthless, and not at all “ touted to his gifted
pen,” because the reporters had not penetrated to the essence of
the character, but had merely sent him what was on the surface.
The original of our old friend, Mr. Micawber, was in the habit of
using tiou rishings like those which are so exquisitely ludicrous in the
novel ; yet in the novel there is hardly a sentence or a phrase which
was actually used. Still, we feel a certainty that every phrase, or
something like it, would have been used by the original had he
found himself in the situations described by the novelist. I have
no doubt that Dickens heard some female use one of the grotesque
forms of speech that has given immortality to Mrs. Gamp, but I
am certain that that worthy original never used a single phrase
that is set dowm in the novel. I can fancy his working in this way :
A single sentence of the pattern of “A lady which her name is
Harris ” furnished the key to the whole. He had never heard the
original talk of the Antwerp packet, but he felt by a sort oftlivina-
tion that she must have called it, “The Ankworks packidge.”
Then he would ask himself what would be the profession that would
best exhibit and develop this lady’s peculiarities, and he settled
on that of a monthly nurse, which was likely enough not the original
one . — F 3.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

sam weller’s “ originals.”

I do not think that, when I was travelling all over the country
giving Dickens Readings, and being hospitably entertained at all
sorts of houses, and acquiring a remarkable experience of all sorts
of hotels, I heard of more than fifty originals of Sam Weller — but I
certainly heard of no fewer. . . . As for Mr. Weller, senior, I think
I may safely- say that I have never been in a town or village which
was famous in the old coaching days without hearing of him. . . .
Of course many points of many people have been reproduced in
Charles Dickens’s books, but there are few, very few, cases in which
absolute portraits are to be found. Of these, the bullying police*
magistrate in Oliver Twist is one, having been taken bodily from a
Mr. Laing, of Hatton Garden Police Court notoriety. Lawrence
Boythom is Walter Savage Landor. The original of Miss Mowcher
found the portrait so lifelike that she was moved to bitter remon-
strance, with the result that the little chiropodist’s share in the
working out of the plot of David Copjwr field was entirely reconsidered
and altered. One Shaw, a Yorkshire schoolmaster, claimed to be
the very Squeers himself, because all the neighbours said he was
so like him. Leigh Hunt was grievously hurt by Harold Skiinpole,
and, I think, reasonably. — Charles Dickens the younger, in Pall Mall
Magazine , July 1896.

PICKWICK AND DON QUIXOTE.

There is no doubt that Dickens, like other great authors, borrowed
many ideas from previous writers, a propos of which Mr. Forster
points out that Smollett gave the hint of Sam Weller’s transference
of himself to the prison in order to serve Mr. Pickwick ; while it
is equally plain (as Dr. Bayne has indicated) that the incarceration
of Jingle was suggested by that of Jenkinson in The Vicar of Wake-
field. Lord Jeffrey saw* a resemblance between Mr. Pickwick and
Don Quixote ; indeed, Pickwick has been alluded to as a free trans-
lation of the famous Spanish romance into the manners of modern
England, Mr. Pickwick being the hero, and Sam his companion
Sancho. Seymour’s first idea of the founder of the Club represented
him as a long thin man. — K 5.

ORIGINALS OF SOME DICKENS CHARACTERS.

The portrait of Micawber w*as based upon certain idiosyncrasies of
Dickens’s father, whose flourishes of speech he enjoyed, and w hose
financial troubles are shadowed forth in David Copper field. The
presentment of Mrs. Nickleby w as partly drawn from the novelist’s
ow r n mother, whose slight peculiarities arc exaggerated in the
story ; h propos of which Charles Dickens the younger explained
that it was only her somewhat involved and discursive style of
narrative, and not the woman herself, that is reproduced. Tn Kate
Nickleby we are justified in assuming a resemblance to his sister
Fanny.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Dickens’s eldest sister, Fanny, married Henry Burnett, a pro-
fessional vocalist, and their only child, Harry, was meditative and
quaint in a remarkable degree, never tiring of reading the Bible
and other good books. It was he, as the novelist confessed, who
inspired the description of Paul Dombey ; and it is fair to surmise
that poor Tiny Tim was associated in Dickens’s mind with the same
original. Paul’s stem guardian, Mrs. Pipchin, was drawn from
a Mrs. Roylance, with whom he lodged for a time during his father’s
incarceration in a debtor’s prison. The prototypes of the Garland
family (in The Old Curiosity Shop) relate to the same period ; he
lived with them in Lant Street, Borough. Dickens obtained his
impressions of the “ Marchioness ” from an orphan from Chatham
workhouse, who was servant in the Dickens family in the days
of his boyhood; the “ orlling ” from St. Luke's workhouse, who
ministered in a similar capacity at the Micawbers’, was delineated
from the same original.

It is more than probable that the prototype of Miss La Creevy
was an aunt of Dickens, Mrs. Janet Barrow, a painter of miniatures,,
who limned his portrait on ivory a few years before the story was
penned. Both the name and the personality of Newman Noggs
were suggested by one Newman Knott, an impoverished gentleman
who called regularly for a weekly allowance (left by a friend) at
the lawyers’ office where Dickens acted as a clerk in 1827-28. In
Mr. Fang (Oliver Twist) he admitted having metaphorically pilloried
Mr. Laing, the presiding magistrate at the Hatton Garden Police
Court, the result of the exposure being dismissal from office. In
a more subtle manner he dealt with Sir Peter Laurie, Lord Mayor
of London in 1832-33, who figured in The Chimes as Alderman Cute,
the justice who declared his intention of “ putting dow n everything.”

Sairey Gamp was actually portrayed from the life, her prototype
being a nurse hired by a friend of Dickens, to take charge of an
invalid. Wackford Squeers (as Dickens is careful to say) w r as in-
tended as a type of Yorkshire schoolmasters — proprietors of those
cheap boarding-schools then flourishing in Northern England.
There is evidence, however, that he had a particular pedagogue in
his mind — one William Shaw — w ho was by no means the worst of
his tribe, and who, through Dickens’s vehement castigation in
Nickleby , became the scapegoat for the rest.

In Bleak House two of the leading characters are modelled from
actual personages, namely, Boythom and Skimpolc, the former
being the fictional presentment (and a by no means unpleasant
one) of Walter Savage Landor, w hile the source of the portrait of
the simple-minded, irresponsible Skimpole was discernible in
peculiar traits of Leigh Hunt, who might not have discovered the
resemblance had not kind friends called his attention to it, thereby
inducing strained relations between him and Dickens — happily
removed by the novelist’s explanation and frank avowal of regret.

Probably no characters in fiction create a more agreeable im-
pression than the brothers Cheeryble, confessedly drawn from the
brothers Daniel and William Grant, self-made men, whom Dickens

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

met at Stocks House, Manchester, in 1839, and whose generosity
and benevolence ho had good reason to admire. Vincent Crummies,
the chief figure in the theatrical portions of NicUeby , was portrayed
(with a touch, probably, of caricature) from a shrewd old actor
named Davenport, with whom Dickens had some acquaintance.

Betsey Trotwood was a certain Miss Strong in real life, who lived
at Broadstairs. Ham Peggotty, the chief figure in the storm scene
in David Copper field, had a living prototype. Such an act of heroism
as that ascribed to him was performed in 1829 by James Sharman,
the keeper of the Nelson Monument at Great Yarmouth, who
happily succeeded in his brave efforts and survived the ordeal.
Sharman’s father was a member of the crew of the Victory, and
assisted in carrying the dying Nelson to the cockpit. — Condensed
from an article by the late F. G. Kitton, in T.P.'s Weekly, October
21, 1904. See also The Novels of Charles Dickens : a Bibliography
and Sketch. By Frederic G. Kitton. London : Elliot Stock, 1897.

OTHER IDENTIFICATIONS.

In the following further list of Identifications the prototypes in
square brackets, as distinct from those in parentheses, are somewhat
conjectural.

Sketches by Boz. — Mr. Percy Noakes, “ The Steam Excursion ”
(Mr. Peter Hardy, a London actuary) ; Jones, “ Misplaced Attach-
ment of Mr. John Dounce ” [Potter, a lawyer’s clerk].

Pickwick. — Doctor Slammer (Doctor Lamert, a regimental surgeon
at Chatham) ; Mr. Wardle (Mr. William Spong, of Cob Tree, near
Maidstone) ; Sam Weller (Simon Spatterdash, n character in a play
called The Boarding House, impersonated by Samuel Vale) ; Tony
Weller (“ Old Chumley,” driver of a London to Rochester coach) ;
Mr. Perker (Mr. Ellis, of Ellis & Blackmore, solicitors, Gray’s Inn) ;
Mrs. Bardell [Mrs. Ann Ellis, proprietor of an eating-house near
Doctors’ Commons] ; Count Smorltork (Prince Puckler-Muskau) ;
Mrs. Leo Hunter [Mrs. Somerville Wood, fond of receiving cele-
brities at her drawing-room gatherings] ; Serjeant Buzfuz (Serjeant
Bom pas ) ; Serjeant Snubbin [Serjeant Arabin] ; Mr. Justice Stare-
leigh (Sir Stephen Caselee, Justice of the Common Pleas); Mr.
Skimpin [Mr. (afterwards Serjeant) Wilkin].

Nicholas Nickleby. — John Browdie (John F , a farmer of

Broadiswood).

The Old Curiosity Shop. — Mr. Slum (a poet employed at Warren’s
blacking factory).

Barnaby Budge. — Barnaby Rudge [Walter de Brisac, of Chatham] ;
Sir John Chester (Lord Chesterfield) ; Ned Dennis (John Dennis,
the hangman) ; Mr. Gashford (Dr. Robert Watson, the biographer
of Lord George Gordon).

Martin Chuzdewit. — Mr. Pecksniff [Samuel Carter Hall].

Dombey and Son. — Perch (Stephen Hale, a City messenger) ;
Doctor Blimbcr (Doctor Everard, proprietor of a boarding-school
for young gentlemen at Brighton).

David Copper field. — Barkis (Blake, a Blunderston carrier) ; Mr*

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Mell (Mr. Taylor, the English master at Wellington House Academy,
Hampstead Road) ; Mr. Creakle (Mr. Jones, the principal of Well-
ington House Academy) ; James Steerforth (partly drawn from
George Stroughill, of Chatham) ; Doctor Strong [Doctor John Birt,

former headmaster of King’s School, Canterbury] ; Mr. Chillip
(drawn from a doctor in attendance upon the Dickens family) ;
Mr. Thomas Traddles (partly from Serjeant Talfourd) ; Captain
Hopkins (Captain Porter, a prisoner at the Marshalsea) ; Gregory,
Tipp, Mealy Potatoes, Mick Walker (employes at Warren’s blacking
factory), namely, Thomas (the foreman), Harry (the carman), Paul
Green, and Bob Fagin.

Blealc House. — Esther Summerson [Miss Sophia Iselin, the
poetess] ; Mrs. Jellyby [partly from Harriet Martineau] ; Phil
Squod (Phil, a serving-man at Wellington House Academy, Hamp-
stead Road); Mdlle. Hortense (Mrs. Manning, the murderess);
Inspector Bucket (Inspector Field, a former chief of Detective
Police at Scotland Yard).

Little Dorrit. — Mr. Merdle (Mr. John Sadleir, M.P., an Irish banker).

A T ale of Two Cities. — Mr. Strvvcr (Mr. Edwin James, a lawyer).

Our Mutual Friend. — Mr. Venus (Mr. J. Willis, of St. Andrew’s
Street, Seven Dials) ; Mr. BofTin (Mr. Henry Dodd, a London dust
contractor).

Edwin Brood. — Mr. Thomas Sapsea [Mr. John Thomas, an
auctioneer, of Rochester] ; Mr. Tope (Mr. Miles, a verger at Rochester
Cathedral).

Hunted Down. — Mr. Julius Slinkton (Mr. Thomas Griffiths Wain-
wright, the poisoner).

Christmas Stories in All the. Year Round. — Mr. tindery, “ The
Haunted House” (Mr. Frederick Ouvry, a solicitor); Captain
Jorgan, “ A Message from the Sea ” (Captain Morgan) ; Mr. Mopes,
“ Tom Tiddler’s Ground ” (James Lucas, the Hertfordshire Hermit) ;
Lamps, “ Mugby Junction” (Chipperfield, a lamp foreman at
Tilbury railway terminus). — T.P.'s Weekly , October 21, 1904.

Boy thorn was affirmed to be the energetic Mr. Walter Savage
Landor. Miss Martineau came forward in her own person to take
the cap of Mrs. Jellyby, and to scold Mr. Dickens for his allusions
to “ blue-stockingism ” and “ JBorioboola Gha.” Whether there
was any foundation for these parallels betwixt living individuals
and the characters in Blenk House , it is not now likely the world will
ever know, but there can be no doubt about one of the characters
in that book — the French lady’s-maid. Mr. Dickens made no
secret about her representing Mrs. Manning, the murderess. Indeed
he attended at her examination at the Police Court, and was present
both at her trial and her execution. The character of Turveydrop
was always believed to portray “ the first gentleman in Europe,
His Sacred Majesty King George the Fourth. — H 4.

In The Lives of the Sheridans , by Percy FitzGerald, the Bardcll
and Pickwick case is supposed to have taken some of its colouring
from the trial of Mrs. Norton in the Melbourne affair. Mr. Fitz-

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

Gerald adds that Wardle, Tupman, Snodgrass, and other names aro
found in the Duke of York’s trial ; while Dodson & Fogg is the
name of the firm of solicitors, slightly altered, in one of the trials
connected with “ Orator ” Hunt.

Serjeant Buzfuz was an entity and had his prototype in fact*
though of course very grossly — even savagely — caricatured, as I
who was acquainted with it can testify. — Bench and Bar y by Mr.
Serjeant Robinson.

Marcus Stone was a name often heard at Gad’s Hill, where his
good spirits and lively talk were ever welcome. He once told me
that on a w r alk with Dickens to Rochester they encountered a trades-
man’s cart on which was the name “ Weller.” He pointed this
out as an odd coincidence. “ Nay,” said the novelist, with his
jocund laugh, “ there he is ! That is the original ! ” Which will be
of interest to true Pickwiekians .— F 3.

The mother of Alice Meynell was Miss Weller, one of the early
“ flames ” of Dickens. Pickwick had appeared some time before
they had met . — V 3.

It came to light in September 1909 that the grandson of the
Weller whom Dickens knew was living and conducting, in Queen
Street, Ramsgate, the business which his grandfather founded in
1823. In a double-fronted shop there a representative of the
Daily Chronicle found “ Sam ” Weller of the third generation. Mr.
Weller at once frankly admitted that, although his surname was
indubitably Weller, his Christian name was George. Mr. Weller’s-
business was that of a hatter and hosier, and over his door was the
inscription —

Sam Weller;

Established 1823.

“ It is quite true,” said Mr. Weller, “ that Dickens took the name
of his famous character from my grandfather. I cannot say, and I
do not believe, that he got any of Sam Weller’s characteristics from
my grandfather. They knew each other, and were on friendly terms
during the time Dickens lived at Broadstairs.” — Daily Chronicle ,
September 30, 1909.

PORTRAITS IN NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.

The ingenious volume which the Rev. Hume Elliot has put forth,.
The Story of the Cheeryble Grants , is yet another evidence of tho
extraordinary vogue of the immortal “ Boz.” Readers who turn
to the Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster, will find in the first
volume of tho Gad’s Hill Edition, and on page 119, this testimony:
“ We visited during two of those years friends of art and letters in
his [ i.e., Ainsworth’s] native Manchester, from among whom Dickens
brought away his Brothers Cheeryble.” That is Forster’s only
allusion to the originals of Tim Linkinwater’s genial employers.
Mr. Kitton traced the brothers to their prototypes, Daniel and
William Grant, and gave a few details of their lives and fortunes.
It is doubtful whether Dickens ever met the Grants ; certainly ho

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

never knew them well. But their characters were well known in
Manchester, and he might easily have heard enough in their praise to
afford him material for his broad and kindly portraiture. — “ A. W.,”
in the Daily Chronicle, March 3, 1907.

I have always heard that much of the discipline described in Dotho-
boys Hall was founded on my father’s description of his experiences.
Charles Dickens and my father were fast friends, and in Nicholas
NicUeby I can trace more than one family likeness. Nicholas him-
self was my father in his youth, and there is in Ralph Nickleby* a
suggestion of the stern old man in Golden Square. — A. [“The
stern old man in Golden Square ” was William a Beckett, father of
C. A. a Beckett, and grandfather of the author of the book.]

A CURIOUS ERROR.

Ill view of the endless discussions on Dickens which are always
cropping up in the papers, it is amusing that it has been reserved for
an American to point out an anachronism, glaringly obvious, in the
eighth chapter of Nicholas Nicldeby : —

“ Here’s a pretty go ! ” said that gentleman [Squeers], 4k the
pump’s froze ! ”

“ Indeed ! ” said Nicholas, not much interested in the intelligence.

“ Yes,” replied Squeers. “ You can’t wash yourself this morning.”

“ Not wash myself ? ” exclaimed Nicholas.

44 Not a bit of it,” rejoined Squeers, tartly. “ So you must be
content with giving yourself a dry polish till we break the ice in
the well, and can get a bucketful out for the boys.”

After breakfast :

“ Where’s the second boy ? ”

“ Please, sir, he’s weeding the garden,” replied a small voice.

“ To be sure,” said Squeers, by no means disconcerted. 44 So
he is. B — 0 — T, hot ; T — I — N, tin ; N — E — Y, ney, bottiney.
Noun, substantive, a knowledge of plants ; he goes and knows ’em.”

The Philadelphia Record , in printing the above from one of its
contributors, adds : “ Sudden changes in the weather are by no
means uncommon here, but we don’t break ice in wells and weed
gardens on the same morning .” — Westminster Gazette , May 14, 189“).

BLANK VERSE FOR PROSE.

Mr. R. H. Home, in his New Spirit of the Age , says that the de-
scription of Little Nell’s death, in The Old Curiosity Shop , if divided
into lines, will form that species of gracefully irregular blank verse
which Shelley and Southey often used. Here is a specimen :

“ When Death strikes down the innocent and young
For every fragile form, from which he lets
The panting spirit free,

A hundred virtues rise.

In shape of mercy, charity, and love,

To walk the world and bless it.

Of every tear

That sorrowing nature sheds on such green graves,

Some good is born, some gentler nature comes .” — JJ

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

THE DEATH OF LITTLE NELL.

January 21, 1841. — Called on Dickens and gave him Douley’s
first copy of Ethdstan. We walked out, called on Rogers. Asked
Dickens to spare the life of Nell in his story ( Master Humphrey's
Clock), and observed that he was cruel. He blushed, and men who
blush are said to be either proud or cruel ; he is not proud, and
therefore — or, as Dickens added — the axiom is false. — Macready’s
Reminiscences.

IN QUEST OF “ COPY.”

Driving one day near Hook, on the Brighton Road, some four or
five miles from Esher, we met Charles Dickens, who had, in 1836,
become a favourite with the public through his Sketches by Boz.
He was walking with Harrison Ainsworth. I have no doubt they
were both on the look out for facts, images, or characters to weave
into their constantly appearing fictions ; and in Dickens’s next
production, Master Humphrey's Clock , I was amused to see that our
stout and wilful pony, Peg, had not escaped his observation, but
had been set to do service in Mr. Garland’s chaise. — Quoted from
William Howitt’s Memoranda ^ a 837 ) in Mary Howitt : An
Autobiography.

DOMBEY AND SON.

At Broadstairs in 1847 Dombey was being written, and also The
Haunted Man , but these two contending interests distracted him.
“ I’m blowed if I know what to do ! ” — F 2.

In Notes and Queries for 28th August 1858 (this periodical takes
its motto from one of Mr. Dickens’s characters), it was suggested
that the name of “Carker” was framed from the Greek, as so much
is said of Mr. Carker’s teeth. Mr. Dickens, however, replied to
this, that the coincidence was undesigned. It lias been further
suggested that the name was made up from “ canker ” and “ cart-
ing ’ (as in “ carking care ”), which are very expressive of the
blighting influence possessed by Carker. — H 4.

BLEAK HOUSE.

The writer of the article upon Landor in the Dictionary of National
Biography remarks that “ Dickens drew a portrait of some at least
of Landor’ s external peculiarities in his Boythom in Bleak II oust.”
This is a very inadequate statement. Of course Lawrence Boythom
was not a photographic likeness of Walter Savage Landor. But the
“ external peculiarities,” however easily recognisable and easily
delineated, were a very small and, artistically speaking, unimportant
part of the portrait. There aro many passages in the private letters
of Mr. Landor now in my possession which might be interpolated
into the conversation of Lawrence Boythom without fear of any
incongruity being detected. Although I have little doubt that these
passages would be selected by critically disposed persons, as
showing the author’s habitual exaggeration and disregard of proba-
bility. — Frances Trollope , by Frances Eleanor Trollope.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

Concerning his preparation for this historical novel, a somewhat
amusing incident is recorded. Anxious to be accurate regarding
facts and dates, he begged Carlyle to lend him some of the authorities
quoted in his own history — whereupon “ the Sage,” grimly enjoying
the jest, despatched to Gad’s Hill all his reference volumes, com-
prising about two cartloads of books ! We are assured, too, that
Dickens read them faithfully, thus testifying to the earnestness
with which he regarded his task, and indicating that thoughtful
deliberation of which Forster gives many instances . — K 1 .

The solicitors who advised me [Edmund Yates] in the matter [i.c.,
the quarrel between Yates and Thackeray] were Messrs. Farrar and
Ouvry of Lincoln's Inn Fields and the counsel retained to conduct
my case was Mr. Edwin James, Q.C., who at that time stood high in
popular favour. A fat florid man. with a large hard face, was Edwin
James, with chambers in the Temple and rooms in Pall Mall : his
practice was extensive, his fees enormous. I had many consultations
with him, but found it difficult to keep him to the subject of my
case : he liked talking, but always diverted the conversation into
other channels. One day I took Dickens — who had never seen
Edwin James — to one of these consultations. James laid himself
out to be specially agreeable ; Dickens was quietly observant. A bout
four months after appeared the early numbers of A Tale of Two
Cities , in which a prominent part was played by Mr. Stryvcr. After
reading the description, I said to Dickens, “ Stryver is a good
likeness.” He smiled. “ Not bad, I think,” he said, “ especially
after only one sitting.” — 7.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

One of our representatives in South Wales seems to have tumbled
across the original from which Dickens drew his portrait of Joe
Gargery, the genial blacksmith in Great Expectations. At Neath
there lives an old man named John Cayford, to whom our represent-
ative was introduced by Mrs. Taverner, of Brunswick Square.
Cayford is an old man of eighty-one, and is now in very weak health.
Dickens seems to have hit oil Cay ford’s personal characteristics
exactly. He has suffered the vicissitudes of fortune which almost
invariably fall to the lot of those who are “ mild, good-natured,
sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish.” For twelve years he workod
with credit to himself with Mr. Prior, formerly a locksmith and
blacksmith in Marchmont Street. Ho afterwards ventured upon
business on his own account, with, however, only gleams of pros-
perity. In course of time the gleams grew less frequent, and
ultimately they ceased altogether. For years past John Cayford
and his wife (eighty-five years of age) would have suffered the
agonies of extreme destitution had it not been for the unceasing
kindness of Mrs. Taverner. Cayford was in the employ of Mr. Prior
during the whole period that Charles Dickens lived at Tavistock
House, Tavistock Square, and it was whilst working for Mr. Prior

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

that he came into contact with the great novelist. There were
many jobs at Tavistock House to place with a tradesman of Mr.
Prior’s calling, and whenever a blacksmith or locksmith was required
Cay ford was sent, and as he did his work Dickens would often
stand by and watch him, and talk with him.

“ They tell me,” said Cayford to our representative, “that there
is in one of his books a blacksmith, and that possibly that black-
smith is me.

“He had at Tavistock House a man who used to write to his
dictation,” continued Cayford. “ His name was Meadows. Meadows
told me that he had done t he writing of the whole of one of Dickens’s
books. Meadows said that he sat behind his master, who talked
over his left shoulder to him. Meadows left Dickens, and in time
got very low r down the scale. Then his wife died, and in a lit- of
despair he took his own life. I w as sent for to come and see him dead.”

“ Can you recall any very striking incidents in the course of your
visits to Tavistock House ? ” asked our representative.

“ Yes, I can,” was the prompt reply. “ I remember having
to go there as late as nine o’clock one night, and in a dark recess
I was set to work upon a cupboard. The cupboard was locked
and the key was lost. I could see that Mr. Dickens was more than
usually interested in what I was doing. It was a tall cupboard,
with a kind of double door. As I have said, Mr. Dickens stood by,
and be was as jocular as ever, and never gave me any bint as to
what was in the cupboard. 1 had picked many locks at Tavistock
House before, but this job was a tougher one than I had ever had
there.

“ Mr. Dickens saw, I suppose, that there was some difficulty,
for he began to joke with me. I can recall his amused look. I
set to work again, and, shortly after, the bolt of the lock shot back
and the cupboard door Hew open. In the cupboard were a lot
of what seemed to be toys, but the principal contents were two
skeletons — one of them that of an adult.

“ Mr. Dickens laughed, for, when the skeleton was moved, the
bones rattled. 4 Do you mean to say that you are frightened,
Cayford V ’ he said.

44 1 replied, * No, sir. I am not likely to be frightened by this.
I have seen too much in the vaults of St. Pancras Church to be
frightened by this.’ ”

This job, which has left so clear an impression on the memory
of John Cayford, was probably done in connection with the pre-
liminary work of the removal of the novelist’s effects from Tavistock
House to Gad’s Hill. Dickens, in a letter dated 4th September,
1860, wrote: 44 Tavistock House is cleared to-day, and possession
given up.” On 4th October of the same year he w rote : “ I have
decided to begin a story. The name is Great Expectation s — I think
a good name.” And, adds our correspondent, it is throughout
this book, Great Expectations , that what is now poor, old, broken-
down John Cayford appears in the character of Joe Gargery. —
Daily Chronicle , June 10, 1904.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

TOM TIDDLER’S GROUND.

The Christmas number for 1861, Tom Tiddler's Ground , excited
considerable curiosity, and one of the stories became a subject of
general discussion — that of “ Mr. Mopes,” the hermit. The
“ hermit ” was a living reality — a person of property and education,
who, to mortify his friends, we believe, withdrew from the world,
and lived in rags and filth. Soon after a letter, signed “ A County
Down Lady,” was inserted in the Doumpalrick Recorder , in which
the writer related the particulars of a visit she had paid to “ Mr.
Mopes,” the hermit, and concluded by saying : “ Charles Dickens
offended him terribly. He pretended he was a Highlander, and
Mr. Lucas at once began to question him about the country, and
then spoke to him in Gaelic, which ho couldn’t reply to. Mr.
Lucas said to him, ‘ Sir, you are an impostor ; you are no gentle-
man.’ ”

A copy of the newspaper was at once forwarded to Mr. Dickens
by a friend, who asked if there was any truth in the statement.
The reply was : “ As you sent me the paper with the cool account
of myself in it, perhaps you want to know whether or not it is
true. I have never seen the person in question but once in my
life, and then I was accompanied by Lord Orford, Mr. Arthur
Helps, the clerk of the Privy Council, my eldest daughter, and my
sister-in-law, all of whom know perfectly well that nothing of the sort
passed. It is a sheer invention of the wildest kind.” (London,
March 27, 1862). — H 4.

EDWIN DROOD.

On 22nd December [1809] he found himself in a dilemma which
recalled an earlier experience of a like character, and in this instance
was doubtless the result of excessive alteration and interlineation.
“ When I had written, and, as I thought, disposed of the first two
numbers of my story, Clowes informed me to my horror that they
were, together, twelve pointed pages too short ! ! ! Consequently I
had to transpose a chapter from No. 2 to No. 1, and remodel No. 2
altogether.” He confided to Mr. Dolby that the price agreed to be
paid to him was the largest sum given for any work from his or any
other hands, namely, £7500 for the copyright, author and publishers
to share equally in the profit of all sales beyond 25,000 copies ;
in addition to this the author was to receive £1000 for the advanced
sheets sent to America. Dickens specially stipulated by deed that
the publishers (Chapman & Hall) should be reimbursed for any
possible loss that might accrue to them in the event of his being
prevented, either by sickness or death, from completing the work —
the first time, curiously enough, such a clause had been inserted in
one of his agreements, and sadly pertinent in this case, the sugges-
tion probably originating in his nervous fear that a return of] his
Chester illness (partial paralysis) might permanently incapacitate
him. — K 1 .

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY.

Many pens have been busy in the attempt to trace out the probable
course of Dickens’s unfinished novel. One of the most notable
efforts is that of Mr. J. Cuming Waters, Clues to Dickens' s “ Mystery
of Edwin Drood” (1005). Towards the close of 1907 the circulation
of the book had a decided fillip given to it by (1) an attempt to show
that Dickens based the story largely on his personal knowledge of
the owner of the Baker Street bazaar — T. C. Druce, the alleged
fifth Duke of Portland ; and (2) on the dramatisation of the story
by Mr. Comyns Carr. Put briefly, Mr. Carr’s solution is as follows :
Edwin Drood was not murdered; he lived. Jasper was not his
murderer. But Jasper, in an opium-inspired dream, passes through
all the sensations of murdering Drood, and, awaking, is convinced
he is Drood's slayer ; and till, in his dying moments, he once more
sees Drood in the ilesh, he retains a belief in his own guilt.

MR. FILDES AND THE SECRET OF EDWIN DROOD.

Mr. Luke Fildes, R.A., wrote an interesting letter to the Literary
Supplement of the Times [November 1905], in reply to an article
in that journal on “ The Mysteries of Edwin Drood.” The letter was
provoked by the following passage in the article :

46 Nor do we attach much importance to any of the hints Dickens
dropped whether to John Forster, to any member of his family,
or to either of his illustrators. He was very anxious that his secret
should not be guessed, and the hints which he dropped may very
well have been intentionally misleading.”

“ I know ” (writes Mr Fildes) 44 Charles Dickens was very anxious
that his secret should not be guessed, but it surprises me to read
that he could be thought capable of the deceit so lightly attributed
to him. The 4 hints he dropped ’ to me, his sole illustrator — for
Charles Collins, his son-in-law, only designed the green cover for
the monthly parts, and Collins told me he did not in the least
know the significance of the various groups in the design ; that they
were drawn from instructions personally given by Charles Dickens
and not from any text — these 4 hints ’ to me wore the outcome of a
request of mine that he would explain some matters, the meaning of
which I could not comprehend and which were for me, his illustrator,
embarrassingly hidden. I instanced in the printers’ rough proof
of the monthly part sent to mo to illustrate where he particularly
described John Jasper as wearing a neckerchief of such dimensions
as to go twice around his neck : 1 called his attention to the circum-
stance that I had previously dressed Jasper as wearing a little black
tie once round the neck, and I asked him if he had any special reasons
for the alteration of Jasper s attire, and, if so, I submitted I ought to
know. He, Dickens, appeared for a moment to bo disconcerted
by my remark, and said something meaning ho was afraid he was
' getting on too fast * and revealing more than he meant at that
early stage, and after a short silence, cogitating, he suddenly said,
4 Can you keep a secret ? ’ I assured him he could rely on me. He

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

then said, 4 1 must have the double necktie ! It is necessary, for
Jasper strangles Edwin Drood with it.* I was impressed by his
earnestness, as, indeed, I was at all my interviews with him — also
by the confidence which he said he reposed in me, trusting that I
would not in any way refer to it, as ho feared even a chance remark
might find its \v r av into the 4 papers ’ and thus anticipate his
* mystery 5 ; and it is a little startling, after more than thirty-five
years of profound belief in the nobility of character and sincerity
of Charles Dickens, to bo told now that he probably was more or less
of a humbug on such occasions.”

THE FATAL WATCH.

In his last and fatally interrupted story it will be remembered
how, after the murder of Edwin Drood, a watch and pin were re-
covered from the weir. This watch was much insisted upon, with
the date of its last winding, etc., no doubt with a view to tho chain
of incidents that were to be linked together later. Dickens deals
with the incident in quite legal style, and it is evident that much
was to turn on it. All this had a rather familiar air to me, and there
came back to my memory a case of murder in which I had been
concerned professionally some three or four years before. It had
been first tried without issue ; on the second trial the man was
convicted and hanged. The chief evidence was tho silent one of a
watch found in the river Laggan, near Belfast, and which was an
inducement to tho crime. This dramatic case made a deep im-
pression on me, and I wrote a highly coloured account for Dickens’s
journal, where it appeared under the title of 44 The Fatal Watch.”
Dickens was much struck with it. When he came to deal with the
murder in his story, this element of tho watch may have suggested
itself as a new and telling incident . — F 2.

ORIGINAL OF “ MR. TOPE.”

Mr. William Miles, the venerable ex-verger of Rochester Cathe-
dral, who died at Rochester on 23rd March 1008, at the age of 01,
was a friend of Charles Dickens, and was immortalised by the great
novelist as 44 Mr. Tope,” in Edwin Drood . Dickens was brought
into close acquaintance with Mr. Miles, who was associated with
Rochester Cathedral for the long period of seventy-five years, first
as a boy chorister at the age of nine, and subsequently as a lay clerk,
under verger, and dean’s verger. — Daily Chronicle , March 24, 1008.

RECOVERED WRITINGS.

The National Edition of the works of Charles Dickens is magnifi-
cently closed in two volumes containing miscellaneous papers, and
also plays and poems. The miscellaneous papers have been re-
covered from the Examiner , Household Words , and All the Year
Round . They are introduced very ably by Mr. B. W. Matz in a
preface of high literary interest. Dickens was a frequent contri-
butor to the Examiner during the editorship of his friend, John

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

Forster, and as far as possible his articles have been found and re-
printed. Also from the contributor’s book of Household Words , now
in the possession of Mr. R. C. Lehmann, several new articles have
been discovered. There are also contributions to All the Year
Round , identified by F. G. Kitton, by means of the office set of that
periodical. I do not say that there is anything of startling interest
in these articles, but those who care for Dickens will be very glad
to have them. Among the most interesting are two on Scott and
his publishers, written in 1839. Dickens takes the side of Scott
with passion, and denounces James Ballantyne very vehemently.
It might have been mentioned by the editor that George Hogarth,
Dickens’s father-in-law, was privy to all the transactions between
Scott and James Ballantyne. No doubt Dickens heard much from
Hogarth about the business. That Hogarth was once at least on
friendly terms with James Ballantyne is shown by the fact that he
gave Ballantyne’8 name to one of his sons. Those who have studied
the very complicated controversy about the relation of Scott and
Ballantyne, will certainly say that Dickens goes too far, and that the
blame must be divided. A very interesting paper is the spirited
reply by Dickens to the criticism of the Edinburgh Review on Little
Dorr it. The Edinburgh Review defended the “ Circumlocution
Office ” by saying that the career of Mr. Rowland Hill did it credit.
Dickons replied justly enough : “ If the Edinburgh Review could
seriously want to know ‘ how Mr. Dickens accounts for the- career
of Mr. Rowland Hill,’ Mr. Dickens w ould account for it by his being
a Birmingham man of such imperturbable steadiness and strength
of purpose that the Circumlocution Office by its utmost endeavours
very freely tried could not weaken his determination, sharpen his
razor, or break his heart.” There is also a highly curious article on
Forster’s Life of Land or, in which Dickens frankly admits that
[>andor is Mr. Boy thorn, and vindicates his portrait. I take two
significant extracts : “ It is essentially a sad book, and herein lies
proof of its true worth. The life of almost any man possessing
groat gifts would be a sad book to himself ; and this book enables us
not only to see his subject but to be its subject if you will.” “ In
a military burial ground in India, the name of Walter Landor
is associated with the present writer's over the grave of a young
officer. No name could stand there more inseparably associated in
the writer s mind with the dignity of generosity : with a noble
scorn of all littleness, all cruelty, oppression, fraud, and false pre-
tence.” — “ A Man of Kent,” in the British Weekly , February 27,1908.

DICKENS AND THE “DAILY NEWS.”

November 4, 1845. — The latest news is that the “ crew ” are
about to start a daily Radical paper ; Dickens editor, Bradbury &
Evans proprietors. There is plenty of money, as I am informed.
This ia no mere renort. I was applied to a few' days back to become
a contributor, ana terms were stated to be no object. I respect-
fully declined, The application to me was not direct but through
a third party. The “ crew ” believe that they can carry the world

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

with them, and have hopes, modest men ! of crushing the Times .
Dickens is about to publish a new Christmas book. Pray let me
have the reviewing of it in the Magazine. [Extract of a letter from
Samuel Phillips to John Blackwood.] — 0.

The Daily News was established in 1846, chiefly by the influence
and exertions of Charles Dickens, its first editor, then in his thirty -
fourth year. He was largely supported by many rich capitalists,
who had great admiration for his genius, and great faith in the
power and prestige of his name. I was personally acquainted with
but one of the non-literary founders of the new journal — the late
Sir William Jackson, who had made a considerable fortune as a
railway contractor. That gentleman, many years after Mr. Dickens
had ceased his brief connection with the paper, informed me, with
a rueful countenance and a groan, that he had thrown away seven
thousand pounds on the speculation. “ Yes,” he said, “ seven thou-
sand pounds in real golden sovereigns ! ” a way of putting it that
might have led me to suppose, by the very strong emphasis he placed
on golden , and by his melancholy iteration of the word, that he had
actually counted out the money sovereign by sovereign, and not
by cheques on his bankers. It was said at the time that the capital
invested or ready to be invested in the concern was £100,000;
but probably nobody knew the truth of the matter except the
investors and Mr. Dickens himself. Sir John East hope, the chief
proprietor of the Chronicle , affected not to fear the opposition,
declaring that Mr. Dickens, anxious above all things to write
political leaders for the Chronicle , had been so woefully wanting
in political knowledge and tact, as to have rendered it necessary
to decline his further services in that capacity. Sir John affirmed
to the end of his life that the brilliant author was so greatly offended
with the Morning Chronicle for its want of judgment, that he set up
the Daily News as a rival, and that if the conductors of the old
journal had had a greater appreciation of the genius of the rising
novelist the new journal would never have come into existence.
Sir John, however, stood alone in his opinion. — M 4.

The intention was to found a Liberal organ in sympathy with
free trade and its leaders, Cobden and Bright, opposed "to the con-
servatism of Sir Robert Peel, and independent of Lord Aberdeen
in foreign politics. The number of men engaged in various depart-
ments was large. John Forster and my father [Mr. Eyre Evans
Crowe, third editor of the Daily News ] were asked to write leaders,
the first on home, the second on foreign affairs. The editorial
department was to be in the hands of Mr. Powell, under whom
Henry Wills and Frederick Hunt were to serve ; Dudley Costello
was to be foreign sub-editor, Scott Russell railway sub-editor, with
William Weir as an assistant. A large staff of reporters was engaged,
under the supervision of Charles Dickens’s father. Blanchard
Jerrold and Laman Blanchard, young fellows of my age, were to
report and write theatrical criticisms. Music was to be dealt with
by Hogarth, Dickens’s father-in-law. My father broke off his

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

connection with the Morning Chronicle*, where my stay as a reporter
became untenable. On the 1st of January, 1846, the first number
of the Daily News appeared. I [Sir Joseph Crowe] was transferred
to the staff of the new journal and sent as an assistant to the Paris
correspondent — a Frenchman, whose name now escapes me. Nothing,
unfortunately, could reconcile me to this change. I had not been
three months away when I felt that the situation was too irksome to
be borne. I asked my father to order my recall, and in spring (1846)
I found myself in London again, engaged on the Daily News as a
reporter for all work at three guineas a week. The Daily News,
in the meanwhile, had settled down into a new condition. Charles
Dickens had not been more than a month at the head of the news-
paper when he discovered that his genius did not fit him for the
performance of the duty of editor of a great political journal. After
his resignation the editorial staff came into the hands of John
Forster.

The office of the Daily News was in a block of buildings of which
the principal part belonged to Bradbury & Evans, the well-known
printers of Whitefriars. The approaches to these buildings were
from Fleet Street, through an archway which led into a back lane
parallel to Bouverie Street. In the lane was a publishing office,
through which there was access to a staircase leading up to two
storeys of rooms. On the first floor the editor’s sanctum, and a
smaller place for a leader-writer, where my father dwelt. On the
second floor, the sub-editors’ room and a spare room ; next door,
the printing-house, with the engines and presses in the basement ;
above these the reporters’ room, where old Mr. John Dickens pre-
sided, and the gallery men and parliamentary shorthand writers
went in and out and copied their reports. Higher up, a flight of
wooden stairs leading to the compositors’ quarters. The buildings
were of all ages, some of them of very tumble -down aspect. They
remind me even now of those which Charles Dickens loved to
describe when he wrote of the fog pervading the lanes, penetrating
the doorways, creeping up the staircases, and lodging in the pipes
of the inmates. Add to this the worn steps, the soiled cocoa-nut
matting, the walls that seemed ever to require painting and polish-
ing, the windows grimed with smoke, the gas, the glare, and the
smell of oil and paper. The ceaseless noise of presses, moved by
hand or by steam, produced a busy hum, whilst in the foggy atmo-
sphere one could see flitting, like ghosts, the forms of men in paper
caps and dirty shirt-sleeves, wetting paj)er, padding frames, pre-
siding at the delivery or withdrawal of sheets that slid in and out
of monstrous machines in all kinds of movement, back and forward
— sliding, revolving, and jumping . — C 6.

JOHN DICKENS AS CHIEF REPORTER.

John Dickens was quite a feature in this pandembnium [the
Daily News Office]. He was short, portlv, obese, fond of a glass
of grog, full of fun, never given to much locomotion, but sitting as

HIS LITERARY LIFE. 69

chairman, and looking carefully to the regular marking and orderly
dispatch to the printers of the numerous manuscripts thrown off
at lightning speed by the men from the gallery. It was his habit
to come down to the office about eight at night, and he invariably
in albweathers walked down Fleet Street and turned into the passage
leading into Whitefriars. Every night as regularly as clockwork
he was relieved of his silk pocket-handkerchief by the thieves of
the groat neighbouring thoroughfare, and he would deplore the loss
in feeling terms when he tried to wipe the perspiration from his
brow ; for it was a peculiarity of his nature that he was always
hot, whatever the weather might be . — G 6.

“daily news” jubilee recollections.

In its issue for 21st January 1896, the story of the Daily News
was told at great length by Mr. Justin McCarthy and Sir John R.
Robinson. 'There were special articles by Mr. John Britton, the
publisher, and other writers, and a facsimile of the first number
was included in this special issue. The appended extracts are taken
from the main story as told by Mr. McCarthy and Sir John Robin-
son :

The coming of the new journal was announced in the following
advertisement which appeared in Punch on the 27th of December,
1845—

“NEW MORNING PAPER.

To commence at the- Opening of Parliament, Price Five pence,

THE DAILY NEWS.

A Morning Newspaper of Liberal Politics and thorough Inde-
pendence.

The leading features of the paper may be briefly stated under
the following heads :

Its City News and Commercial Intelligence, collected from the
highest sources, will be scrupulously impartial and always early ;

Its Scientific and Business Information on every topic connected
with Raihvays, whether in actual operation, in progress, or pro-
jected, will be found to be complete ;

An extensive system of Foreign Correspondence in all parts of
the world has been for some time and is now in course of organisa-
tion ;

Its Parliamentary Reports, its Law' Reports, and every other
item of such matter, will bo furnished by gentlemen of the highest
* qualification ;

Among the writers of its Leading Articles, its Criticisms on Books,
the Drama, Music, and the Fine Arts, arosome of tho most distin-
guished names of this time ;

The Literary Department of the Daily Neivs will bo under the
direction of Mr. Charles Dickens.

The counting-house and office for advertisements intended for
insertion in the Daily Netv$ will be at No. 90 Fleet Street, London,

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

to which place communications for the Editor should be addressed
until the publishing offices in Whitefriars shall be completed.”

No part of the advertisement, except perhaps the announcement
of the coming of a Liberal daily newspaper in London, excited
so much public interest as the statement that the literary depart-
ment of the new journal was to be under the direction of Mr. Charles
Dickens. The literary department was, of course, understood
to mean all that comes within the province of an editor, as distinct
from the commercial department and the work of the compositor.
Dickens was then by far the most popular author in this country.
Thackeray had not yet published his Vanity Fair . Carlyle had
not yet begun to be broadly knowm. The novels of Dickens were
in every home throughout the country where any reading went on
at all. Whether the idea w*as his own to begin with, it is not easy
to find out ; but the probability would seem to be that the project
came up in his mind, and that he then took other men into his
confidence.

Mr. Forster w r as strongly opposed to Dickens’s proposal to under-
take the work — partly or chiefly because he feared that the strain
would be too great for Dickens’s health. Nevertheless, as soon as
it w r as settled that Dickens was to undertake the conduct of the
paper, Mr. Forster, out of pure loyalty to his friend, consented to
hold a place on the staff of the journal. Dickens, indeed, brought a
very powerful staff along with him. From memoranda of agree-
ments made when the paper was on the eve of being started, we
learn that W. J. Fox, Douglas Jerrold, John Forster, and Mark
Lemon w r ere among the first who agreed to serve under him. Among
the original proprietors of the paper were Messrs. Bradbury & Evans,
and Mr., afterwards Sir Joseph, Paxton. Mr. Scott Russell, whose
name has since been known in many a great enterprise, was made
“ railway editor,” and Dickens allowed him a very free hand in the
conduct of his department. The first leading article was written
by Mr. William Johnson Fox, distinguished before and since as
preacher, platform orator, member of the House of Commons,
and political wTiter. Douglas Jerrold and Albany Fonblanquc wrote
leaders, and Charles Mackay contributed poems.

Dickens flung himself into the work with a thoroughly character-
istic energy. For months and months he never spared himself. That
was his nature — that was his way — he could not help it. For
months and months he was to be found morning, noon, and night
at the offices which had been engaged for the production of the Daily
News . He went into every detail of arrangement. He got around
him a capable and brilliant staff. Journalism was not then paid
nearly so well in London as it is in our time ; but nevertheless Mr.
Dickens appears to have made the most liberal arrangements for
the compensation of all those who worked with him and under him.
His one idea was to make the Daily News the first really Liberal
daily paper of England, as complete and well appointed in every
qualification of English journalism as the very best of those which
were got up for the use of the classes rather than of the masses. No

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

inferior article was to be offered to the English public. Men were
not to be invited to take the paper simply because it advocated
their own political opinions. They were invited to take it because,
while it did advocate their own political opinions, it was also to be
the best newspaper, simply regarded as a newspaper, that they
could get anywhere. This was Mr. Dickens’s idea, and that idea
he enforced in action.

Dickens was marvellously fortunate in the choice of some of his
Correspondents. The first Correspondent at Rome, engaged by
Dickens himself, was the celebrated Father Prout (Frank Mahony),
a Catholic clergyman from the city of Cork, who, finding after
awhile but little vocation for the duties of the priesthood, set out
for London to make a way into literature — which, indeed, he very
quickly did. He was then little over forty-one years old. But it
was his intention to republish his first series of Daily News letters
under the title of Facts and Figures from Italy , by Don Jeremy
Savonarola, addressed during the last two winters to Charles Dickens,
Esq., being an appendix to his Pictures ; meaning, of course, the
Pictures from Italy. The letters were actually republished under
this title by Richard Bentley, in 1847.

In littlo more than four months from the day the paper started
the whole of Dickens’s connection with the Daily News , even that of
contributing letters with his signature, ceased. — Daily News , January
21, 1890.

THE FIRST NUMBER OF THE “DAILY NEWS.”

Mr. W. Moy Thomas writes: No. 1 of the Daily News. It is
a somewhat faded and tattered copy that lies before me, bearing
date “ Wednesday, January 21, 1840,” but in the right upper corner
of the front pago is a memorandum in a lady’s hand which invests
it at once with a special interest — qualities it, indeed, for admission
into an exhibition of literary and journalistic curiosities. It is
in the words : “ Brought homo by Charles at two o’clock in the
morning, January 21st,” and is signed “ Catherine Dickens.”
“ Charles ” was, of course, the illustrious author of Pickwick , Oliver
Twist , and The Christinas Carol , and “ Catherine Dickens ” was the
young wife of the first editor of this journal, who had thus recorded
the history of this visible symbol of the succevssful launching of the
new Liberal organ. 1 Other tokens of Charles Dickens meet the eye
as I turn over the pages. The hand of the author of the American
Notes is distinctly traceable in a passage in the opening address,
wherein reference is made to a disposition on the part of the Press,
“ which only prevails in England and America,” to “ sordid attacks
upon itself,” and a promise is given to conduct all journalistic dis-
putes with courtesy and moderation. No one who is aware of the
style of controversy which was deemed permissible, even in journals

1 The lady must have been mistaken in the hour ; but this need not
shake faith in the genuineness of the autograph memorandum, which
has been confirmed by Miss Georgina Hogarth, the surviving sister of
Mrs. Dickens, as well as by Mrs. Perugini, the novelist's eldest daughter.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

of high standing and repute, in the first half of the present century*
will say that this promise was superfluous. 44 The stamp on news*
papers,” he continues , 44 is not like the stamp on Universal medicine
bottles, which licenses anything, however false and monstrous.”
Graver matters, however, are set forth in this business-like docu-
ment. “The principles advocated by the Daily News” says the
address, 44 will be principles of progress and improvement, of educa-
tion, civil and religious liberty, and equal legislation — principles
such as its conductors believe the advancing spirit of the time
requires, the condition of the country demands, and justice, reason,
and experience legitimately sanction.”

A more direct indication of the association of Dickens with the
new paper is found on the sixth page, where there appears the first
instalment — occupying just two columns — of “ Travelling Letters
Written on the Road, by Charles Dickens,” describing in his
picturesque and exhilarating style the incidents of the first day’s
journey of the writer and his family on the way from Paris to
Chalons, in a postchaise and four, with jack-booted postilion, in a
fashion which was then on the very brink of vanishing for evermore.
Those were times when railway enterprise, which furnished much
employment to the labouring classes, was at its very height. The
44 Railway News ” in this number occupies five columns. There
were, of course, no telegraphic messages. Journalism was still
limited to the feeble resources of the coach and the steamboat —
save in so far as the rapidly extending but still very far from com-
plete network of our railway system offered a speedier mode of
conveyance. “ At the hour of going to press,” says a notice to tho
reader, “ our express from Paris had not arrived. The delay has,
in all possibility, arisen from the stormy weather in the Channel,
or^from the accident that occurred on Monday night on tho South-
Eastern Railway.” Under these circumstances, the editor regarded
no doubt with just pride the fact that a full report appeared on
the second page of the vast gathering — numbering five thousand
persons — on the previous evening in St. Andrew’s Hall, Norwich,
to hear the controversy between Mr. Cobden and Mr. Wodehouse
on the great question of the day. It is dated “Norwich, Tuesday,
lQjp.m.,” is stated to be “ from our own reporters, by special express,”
and gives in full the speeches of the disputants and ot hers, extending
altogether to four and a half close columns of type. Side by Side
with this, in token of the absorbing interest in the struggle, will be
found in the facsimile a report of meetings of Westminster and
Marylebone electors to petition for tho total repeal of the Corn Daws,
held on the day before. Not in prose only did the Daily News
sustain the cause : for here also will be found tho first of the series
of ‘^Voices of the Crowd,” written for this paper by Dr. Charles
Mackay. It is entitled “ The Wants of the People,” and begins :

44 What do we want ? Our daily bread,

Leave to earn it by our skill ;

Leave to labour freely for it,

Leave to buy it where we will.”

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FACSIMILE OF DICKENS’S HANDWRITING

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Articles of more general interest are represented almost exclusively
by the “ Travelling Letters ” of Dickens. There is, it is true, a long
article on music, but it has no direct relation to anything then going
on in the musical world at home ; though the renowned M.
Jullien was then capering and flourishing his ivory baton in the
orchestra at his Promenade Concerts in Covent Garden Theatre.
For tokens of the condition of the drama in 1846 we have to go to
the public announcements, which — since advertisements are never
lacking to the first number of a new paper — are probably exhaustive.
Dickens must have regarded with mixed feelings the fact that out
of the six theatres here represented, no fewer than four were playing
versions of his latest Christmas story, The Cricket on the Hearth ,
for in those days the unauthorised adapter flourished unchecked.
The houses referred to were the Haymarket, the Lyceum, the
Adelphi, and the Princess’s.

Still rarer than an original copy of No. 1 of the Daily News is a
copy of the fictitious or “ dummy ” number, which, in accordance
with the customary practice, was prepared a day or two earlier,
with the object of testing by a sort of private rehearsal the com-
pleteness of the arrangements of the printing office. It is dated
Monday, 19th January 1846, and is mainly composed of debates,
news, and messages, apparently made up, for the most part, from
other papers. It has, however, a somewhat incoherent description
of the execution of the murderer Tapping at Newgate, evidently
from the pen of Charles Dickens — for it foreshadows his eloquent
three letters on Capital Punishment which appeared a few weeks
later, as well as his letters on the hanging of the Mannings, husband
and wife — together with a humorous leading article, in which his
hand is no less manifestly traceable. The latter takes the form of an
indignant protest against the supposed conduct of a jury at the Old
Bailey in acquitting, by a verdict of “Justifiable Homicide,” “a
person named Jones, said to be of prepossessing and modest exterior,”
on an indictment for “ wilfully and maliciously occasioning the death
of five bricklayers, seven carpenters, two furniture -warehouse
porters, three painters, and a plasterer.” The person named Jones
is stated to have lured the unfortunate men to the performance in
certain premises in Whitefriars of various feats of bodily strength
and supernatural muscular exertion, to which they fell an untimely
sacrifice. The trial, I need hardly say, was purely imaginary, the
burlesque comment being written for the amusement of the author’s
colleagues and coadjutors, who were aware of the haste and pressure
under which Mr. Jones, who was the master printer, had been
induced at short notice to undertake the work of preparing the rooms
and offices in Bouverie Street for the reception of the editor and his
staff. An interest now lies in the fact of its being an unknown skit
by Dickens, albeit its humour and significance have in great degree
evaporated . — Daily News, January 21, 1896.

Among the stories of the projection and establishment of London
papers, that of the Daily News has never been completely told.
The first number is dated 21st January 1846. It is curious to see

HIS LITERACY LIFE.

a daily paper without any telegrams. It was thought a great
thing to have received from Paris on the 21st of January advices
as late as the 19th. A day or two previous to the issue of the first
Daily News a specimen number was written, printed, and published
in due form to test the efficiency of the organisation and machinery.
Notwithstanding this, it appears from the good-humoured protest
of “ A Subscriber,’* in the second number, that the arrangements
were by no means perfect. Tho letter is interesting, since it is
known that Mr. Charles Dickens wrote it, as well as the editorial
rejoinder by which it was accentuated:

“ To the Editor of the Daily Neivs :

“ Sir, — Will you excuse my calling your attention to a variety
of typographical errors in your first number ? Several letters
are standing on their heads, and several others seem to have gone
out of town ; while others, like people who are drawn from the
militia, appear by deputy, and are sometimes very oddly repre-
sented. 1 have an interest in the subject, as I intend to be, if you
will allow me, Your Constant Reader.

“ January 21, 1846.”

“ We can assure our good-humoured correspondent that we
are quite conscious of the errors he does us the favour to point
out so leniently. Tho very many inaccuracies and omissions in
our first impression are attributable to the disadvantageous circum-
stances attending the production of a first number. They will not
occur, we trust, in any other. — Ed. Daily News.”

Dickens, during the six months [this would include the pre-
li m inary arrangements] of his editorship, was active in engaging
contributors right and left. Money flowed from the proprietary
coffers “ like water.” A railway editor was engaged at two thou-
sand pounds a year. There were foreign, colonial, and heaven
knows what editors besides. Bradbury & Evans supplied the capital.
Ultimately Mr. 0. W. Dilke, ... on becoming manager, reduced
things to older, though if it was upon his recommendation that the
price of the paper was lowered to 2.U1., his wits must have been
asleep for once. In those days the heavy paper and advertisement
duties made it impossible for a journal to be sold profitably under
5d. per copy. The object of the Daily News for some time seemed
to be to constitute itself a popular Times . The leading journal was
not then the champion of freedom it is now. — 11 2.

DICKENS AND u PUNCH.”

It is erroneously supposed that the late Charles Dickens wrote
regularly for Punch . There is among Mark Lemon’s papers an
article signed Charles Dickens, on tl^e outside of which is written,
44 My sole contribution to Punch.” The idea that Dickens was
on the staff of Punch originated, no doubt, through the intimacy
which so long existed between the two men. Scarcely a day passed
at one period of their lives without they met each other at their

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

own houses. They frequently spent evenings at home together,
or at some place of public amusement. They generally devoted
one or two evenings in the week to what Mark called a London
ramble, which was frequently an excursion to the East End,
“ picking up characters ” at minor theatres, circuses, and other
places of resort in the wildest districts of the wildest parts of the
metropolis. Charles Dickens, Clarkson Stanfield the painter,
and Mark Lemon often made excursions of this kind in company,
conversing with any persons whom they might care to know, and
thus gaining a fund of information which was afterwards profitably
employed. Many passages in Dickens’s works, considered far-
fetched and overdrawn, may be traced to scenes in real life witnessed
during these London rambles. It was Lemon who planned the
excursions, as is shown by Dickens’s letters. When Dickens
lived at Tavistock House, Lemon lived close by in Cordon Square ;
and notes, letters, and reminders of appointments were continually
passing from one house to the other. In later days, owing to
Dickens’s business severance from Bradbury & Evans, and certain
family troubles, a coolness rose between Lemon and his illustrious
neighbour ; but there was a revival of something like the old friend-
ship a year or two prior to Dickens’s death . — H 2.

Charles Dickens is supposed to have contributed to Punch in
the year 1849 an article entitled “ Dreadful Hardships Endured
by the Shipwrecked Crew of the London, Chiefly for Want of
Water” — a criticism on the scandalous condition of the suburban
water-supply. Mr. F. G. Kitton has examined the original manu-
script preserved by Mrs. Mark Lemon in her autograph album.
Mr. Hatton found it among Lemon’s papers, bearing on the outside,
in the Editor’s handwriting, the inscription, “ Dickens’ only con-
tribution to Punch.” But the alleged contribution is absolutely
undiscoverable in the pages of the paper. The explanation is,
in Mr. Kitton’ a words, that “ about the time the manuscript was
written, several pictorial allusions to foul water in suburban London
appeared in Punch , which bear directly upon the subject of Dickens’s
protest, and it is surmised that the Editor, on the receipt of Dickens’s
contribution, considered that greater prominence would be given
to the matter to which they referred by means of a cartoon than by
a few lines of text. Hence we find the rebuke enforced by the
pencil of the artist, instead of the mere literary lashing which
Dickens intended to inflict upon that particular public grievance.
It may safely be suggested that this was the only occasion on
which, after his reputation was made, Dickens was ever “ declined
with thanks.” This MS., it may bo added, was sold at Sotheby’s
on 9th July 1889, and was knocked down for £16 . — 8 3.

Once, by the hand of Le&h, Dickens made an appearance in
Punch , and, curiously enough, only once. This was in the drawing
of the awful appearance of a “ wopps ” at a picnic (p. 76, vol
xvii.), where the novelist appears as the handsome, but not very

HIS LITERARY LIFE

77 '

striking, youth attendant on the young lady who is overcome at
the distressing situation. It must be admitted that the portrait is
hardly recognisable. — S 3.

AS MAGAZINE EDITOR.

As an editor Dickens was most painstaking and conscientious :
outside contributors, whose articles had passed the first critical
ordeal of Mr. Wills’s judgment, and had been referred to “ the
Chief,” received thoroughly impartial attention from him, while
for his friends he could not take too much trouble or show too
much interest. — Y.

Just about then [1851-3], appeared the first numbers of House-
hold Words , which 1 devoured with extreme eagerness, and the
early volumes of which still appear to me, after a tolerably wide
experience of such matters, to be perfect models of what a magazine
intended for general reading should be. In them, besides the
admirable work done by Dickens himself — and he never was better
than in his concentrated essays — tl ere were the dawning genius
of Sala, which had for mo a peculiar fascination ; the novels of
Mrs. Gaskell ; the antiquarian lore of Peter Cunningham and
Charles Knight; the trenchant criticism of Forster; the first-
fruits of Wilkie Collins’s unrivalled plot-weaving ; the descriptive
powers of R. H. Horne, who as a prose-writer was terse and practi-
cal ; the poetic pathos of Adelaide Procter ; the Parisian sketches
of Blanchard Jerrold ; the singularly original “ Roving English-
man ” series of Grenville Murray; the odd humour of Henry
Spicer. — Y.

Dickens always considered the regular contributors to House -
hold Words and to All the Year Rou nd as connected with him in
a manner much more closely than as ordinary professional or purely
business connections. “My brothers” was his favourite phrase;
and when Miss Adelaide Anne Procter died he wrote for the beauti-
ful Legends and Lyrics , which her family published as an in
memoriam volume, a most touching preface. This passage explains
how he came to know the daughter of “ Barry Cornwall ” :

“ In the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as Conductor of the
weekly journal Household Words , a short poem among the proferred
contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses
perpetually passing through the office of such a periodical, and
possessing much more merit. Its authoress was quite unknown
to me. She was one Miss Mary Berw ick, whom I had never heard
of ; and she was to be addressed by letter, if addressed at all, at a.
circulating library in the western district of London. Through
this channel. Miss Berw ick was informed that her poem was ac-
cepted, and was invited to send another. She complied, and became*
a regular and frequent contributor.* Many letters passed betw r een
the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick herself was never
seen. How we came gradually to establish, at the office of House-*
hold Words 9 that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have nevej^

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

discovered. But we settled, somehow, to our complete satis-
faction, that she was governess in a family ; that she went to
Italy in that capacity, and returned ; and that she had long been
in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of her,
except that she was remarkably" business-like, punctual, self-
reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly invented the
rest. For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to
me than Miss Berwick the governess became. This went on until
December 1854, when the Christmas number, entitled The Seven Poor
Travellers , was sent to press. Happening to be going to dine that
day with an old and dear friend, distinguished in literature as Barry
Cornwall, ! took with me an early proof of the number, and remarked,
as I laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a very
pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick. Next day brought
me the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the mother
of its writer, in its writer's presence ; that 1 had no such corre-
spondent in existence as Miss Berwick ; that the name had been
assumed by Barry Cornwall’s eldest (laughter. Miss Adelaide Anne
Procter.” — // 4.

Among the “ might have bcens ” of these early years must be
mentioned a poetic career. From my earliest years 1 had been an
indefatigable rhymester, and an exhilarating accident well-nigh
turned the scale, poetry instead of romance kicking the beam. An
incident that came under my notice suggested the poem entitled
“ The Golden Bee.” With the audacity of youth 1 dispatched it
to the great Dickens, then editing his Household Words, After
some time came a cheque for £5 and a number of the magazine
containing my contribution. Five pounds for the artless rhymes
of a little country girl— was not this half the price of Paradise.
Lost ? But overwhelming as seemed the payment, the approbation
of Charles Dickens was guerdon far more prized. And “ The Golden
Bee” has not falsified the master’s judgment. It is now a stock
piece at Penny Headings, and, like “ The White House by the Sea,”
has long survived a generation ! — Reminiscences , by M. Betham-
Edwards.

By the year 1862 she (Mrs. Linton) had lost touch with all the
editors for whom she had been regularly working, with the sole
exception of Charles Dickens. Indeed, had it not been for All the
Year Round, her literary output for this year would have been
just one article in Temple Bar.

All the Year Round, it wall be remembered by those familiar with
the life of Dickens, was the magazine which had been started by
him in 1859 after the dispute with Messrs. Bradbury & Evans,
which had resulted in the discontinuance of Household Words.
Mrs. Linton, who had been a regular contributor to the latter, was,
immediately on its abandonment, approached by the editor of
Once a Week , Messrs. Bradbury & Evans’s new illustrated venture.
Here she found herself on the horns of a dilemma. Either she must

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

refuse what was a valuable offer, or run the risk of appearing dis-
loyal to Dickens, to whom she had much reason to be grateful. She
thereupon wrote to him explaining the situation, and asking whether
he saw any objection to her writing for the opposition periodical.
Dickens, who undoubtedly felt very bitter on the subject of the
rival publication, replied that she could not write too much for
All the Year Round ; that whatever she wrote for him would as a
matter of course be warmly welcomed ; and that her contribu-
tions should always have precedence in his magazine. Forthwith
she became his faithful lieutenant, and refused all the tempting
offers of his rivals. Notwithstanding their long literary connection,
Mrs. Linton saw but little of her great contemporary. — L 3.

On Saturday, 30th March 1850, was issued the first number
of Household Words , price 2d., conducted by Charles Dickens.
No article had the name of the author appended, and when the
4k Conductor ” proposed to Jerrold that he should contribute to its
pages, but added that his name could not appear, as the journal
was anonymous, the wit replied, “ Ay, I see it is, for there’s the
name of Charles Dickens on every page .” — II 4.

DICKENS’S “ YOUNG MAN.”

Mr. John Hollingshead was known to everybody at Household
Words office in the old time at Wellington Street, in the Strand,
as Dickens’s “ Young Man.” Mr. Hollingshead. who was a city
clerk, forwarded, in the mid-fifties, through Moy Thomas, an article
on “ Life at a City Eating-House.” Dickens was highly pleased with
the subject and the way it was treated, and told Thomas, his
friend, to send in more. Hollingshead’s articles quite delighted the
editor with their graphic description and clear incisive st}de. The
articles on 44 Underground London ” and “ Odd Journeys ” (such
were their titles when reprinted in book form) underwent the
editorial scrutiny, and won great approval from it. Hollingshead,
from his practical training in commercial life, shrewd sense, and
ready wit, became a favourite with the editor. Anything requiring
promptitude and enterprise found Hollingshead told off for the
event, and he always well acquitted himself. Indeed, so well,
that Dickens used to speak of him as 4 4 My Young Man.” — Household
Words , March 26, 1004.

OFFICE RELICS.

The Dickens relics from the novelist’s private office at 20 Welling-
ton Street, Strand* where he edited All the Year Round , were in-
cluded in a sale at Sotheby’s in 1002. There were the office table
and chair, the looking-glass, and the high -backed cane chair, which
were in daily use by Dickens for many years. They were given
by the novelist’s son to the housekeeper, Mrs. Heddcrly, from whom
they were bought by the late Henry Walker. They were afterwards
in the custody of Mr. Walker’s son-in-law, at Bromley, Kent.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

AS A POET.

To most of us the poetry of Dickens means that poem in the sixth
^chapter of Pickwick, the last stanza of which runs :

“ Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,

And nations have scattered been ;

But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,

From its hale and hearty green.

The brave old plant, in its lonely days,

Shall fatten upon the past :

For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the Ivy’s food at last.

Creeping on, where time has been,

A rare old plant is the Ivy green.’’

The two recently added volumes, however, in the Gad’s Hill
Edition, entitled Miscellaneous Papers (Chapman & Hall), include
several other poems by the great novelist, besides the more famous
“ Ivy Green.”

Of these, two were recently discovered through the medium of
the Contributors’ Book to Household Words. The first was “ Hiram
Power’s Greek Slave”; the second, entitled “Aspire!” 1 quote in
full:

“ Aspire ! whatever fate befall.

Be it prai.se or blame---
Aspire! even when deprived of al!

It is thy nature’s aim.

Tho seed beneath the frozen earth.

When winter checks the fresh green birth,

Still yearningly aspires.

With ripening desires.

And, in its season, it will shoot
Up into the perfect fruit ;

But had it not lain low.

It ne’er had learn’d to grow.

Aspire ! for in thyself alone
That power belongs of right ;

Within thyself that seed is sown.

Which strives to reach the light;

All pride of rank, all pomp of place,

All pinnacles that point in space,

But show thee, to tho spheres,

No greater than thy peers ;

But if thy spirit doth aspire.

Thou risest ever higher — higher- —

Towards that consummate end,

When Heavenward we tend.”

Dickens wrote the prologues for two plays by Wilkie Collins —
The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep. To Wilkie Collins’s The
Lighthouse Dickens also contributed “ The Song of the Wreck,”
which was sung by Mary, his eldest daughter, who took the part of

cHAHi.i:?i i>i< kens IN 1802
Kny raved from the photo by Clandct

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Phoobe in the play. The poems, “ A* Child’s Hymn,” from the
Wreck of the Golden Mary , and “ The Blacksmith,” are also included
in the Gad’s Hill Edition.— “ T. P. ” in T.P.'s Weekly , June 5, 1908.

To the foregoing may be added Dickens’s “ Hymn of the Wilt-
shire Labourers,” which appeared originally in the Daily News on
14th February 1846. It was suggested by some words of Lucy
Simpkins, a poor Wiltshire labouring woman, who often spoke at
open-air meetings of the distressed agricultural labourers, and whose
rude, unlettered eloquence had attracted much attention. It was
Lucy Simpkins whose exclamation, “ They do say we be purtected.
If we be purtected we be staarved,” was taken up and repeated
in the papers and at meetings throughout the kingdom. — E d.

HYMN OF THE WILTSHIRE LABOURERS.

“ Don’t you all think that we have a great need to cry to our God
..to put it in the hearts of our greassous Queen and her Members of Parlia-
ment to grant us free bread ? ” — Lucy Simpkins, at Bremhill.

“ 0 God, who by Thv Prophet’s hand
Didst smite the rooky brake.

Whence water came, at Thy command,

Thy people's thirst to slake ;

Strike, now, upon this granite wall,

Stern, obdurate, and hieh ;

And let some drops of pity fall
For us, who starve and die.

O God, who took a little child,

And set him in the midst.

And promised him Thy merev mild.

As by Thy Son Thou didst ;

Look down upon our children dear,

So gaunt, so cold, so spare,

And let their images appear
Where Lords and Gentry are !

O God, teach them to feel how we,

When our poor infants droop.

Are weakened in our trust in Thee,

And how our spirits stoop;

For in Thy rest, so bright and fair,

All tears and sorrows sleep.

And their young looks, so full of care.

Would make Thine Angels weep !

O God, who with Thy finger drew,

The judgment coming on,

Write, for these men, what must ensue,

Ere many years be gone !

O God, whose bow T is in the sky,

Let them brave not and dare
Until they look (too late) on high,

And see An Arrow there 1

HIS LITERARY LIFE.

O God, remind them ! In the bread
They break upon the knee,

These sacred words may yet be read,

‘ In memory of Me.’

O God, remind them ! of His sweet
Compassion for the poor,

And how lie gave them Bread to eat,
And went from door to door ! ”

AS A LITERARY CRITIC.

Dickens was, if should be said, not only George Eliot’s literary
admirer, but the first discoverer of her sex and actual identity. The
former revealed itself to him in the description of Hetty Sorrel
at her looking-glass. The latter was thus humorously intimated
in a letter which I have seen from his daughter to Edmund Yates :
“ Papa declares Adam Bede's writer to be either Bradbury or Evans,
and lie doesn’t think it’s Bradbury.” — Platform , Press , Politics , and
Play , by T. II . S. Escott.

In his chapter on the painting of Dickens’s portrait, in My
Autobiography , the late W. P. Frith, R.A., describes very pleasantly
his experiences with Dickens as a sitter, and gives the following
interesting anecdote of another great contemporary of the nove-
list : “ On one of the few occasions on which I got to work before him,
I saw upon the table a paper parcel with a letter on the top of it.
From the shape I guessed that it contained books, as the event
proved. Presently Dickens came in, read the letter, and handed it
to me, saying : 4 Here you are again ! This is the kind of thing I am
subject to : people send me their books, and what is more, they
require me to read them ; and what is almost as bad, demand my
opinion of them. Read that.’ I obeyed, and read what appeared
to me a very well-written appeal to the great master in the art,
of which the writer was a very humble disciple, etc., begging for
his perusal of the accompanying work, and his judgment upon it,
and so on. The work was Adam Bede , and the writer’s name was
George Eliot. Dickens took up one of the volumes, looked into it,
and said : * Seems clever — a good style ; suppose I must read it.’
And read it he did that very day, for the next morning he said:
4 That’s a very good book, indeed, by George Eliot. But, unless I
am mistaken, G. Eliot is a woman.’ ” — F 6.

Four letters written by Charles Dickens in 1864, on the question
of a national monument to Shakespeare, brought £15 at Sotheby’s
on 13th July 1009. Dickons w r roto very strongly. “ I dread the
notion of a statue ; moreover, I shiver and tremble at the thought of
another graven image in some public place. Lastly, I believe that
Shakespeare has left his monument in his works, "and is best left
without any other.” He goes on to suggest that, if anything were
done, let the Government ‘ found scholarships in his name in all the
arts.”— Daily Telegraphy July 14, 1000.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

DICKENS AND THE WRITING OF BIOGRAPHY.

A wholesome and authentic picture of theatrical ldo, and of the
clown’s life in particular, is to be found in the delightful pages of
Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi , edited by “ Boz.” Dickens is said
to have held this work in very light estimation, and to have spoken
of the material which in general composed it as “ twaddle,” but the
warmth with which he resented an objection to his handling the
subject, on the ground that he could never have seen Grimaldi,
shows that it must have had a place in his affections. “ I under-
stand,” he wrote, “ that a gentleman unknown is going about this
town, privately informing all ladies and gentlemen of discontented
natures, that, on a comparison of dates and putting together of
many little circumstances which occur to his great sagacity, he has
made the profound discovery that I can never have seen Grimaldi,
whose life I have edited, and that the book must therefore of necessity
be bad. Now’, although I was brought up from remote country
parts in the dark ages of 1819 and 1820 to behold the splendour
of Christmas pantomimes and the humour of Joe, in whose honour,
I am informed, I clapped my hands with great precocity, and
although I even saw* him act in the remote times of 1823 ; yet as I
had not then aspired to the dignity of a tail coat, though forced
by a relentless parent into my first pair of boots, 1 am willing, w ith
the view T of saving this honest gentleman further time and trouble,
to concede that I had not arrived at man’s estate when Grimaldi,
left the stage, and that my recollections of his acting are, to my
loss, but shadowy and imperfect. Which confession I now make
publicly, and without mental qualification or reserve, to all whom
it may concern. But the deduction of this pleasant gentleman,
that therefore the Grimaldi book must be bad, I must take leave to
doubt. I don’t think that to edit a man’s biography, from his own
notes, it is essential you should have known him, and I don’t
believe that Lord Braybrooke had more than the very slightest
acquaintance with Mr. Pepys, whose memoirs lie edited two centuries
after he died .” — P 2.

ON THE PLATFORM

It appears to have been the success of the readings given by him
in aid of the Douglas Jerrold Fund in the summer of 1857 that first
suggested to Dickens the possibility of giving public readings for
his own benefit. There were, in all, four series of public readings :
(I) In 1858-0, under the management of Mr. Arthur Smith ; (2) in
1801-3, under Mr. Headland's management; (3) in 1866-7, and
(4) in 1868-70, the third and fourth being managed by Mr. George
Dolby on behalf of Messrs. Chappell. The tour in America began
at Boston in November 1867, and ended at New York in the follow-
ing April. The first reading in London was at St. Martin’s Hall.

Dickens, it should be noted, edited the stories and portions of
stories which he read in public. A reprint of the text used by him
at his readings in England and the United States was published by
Chapman & Hall in 1007 uith an introduction by Mr. John
Hollingshead.

“ TOOK THE COUNTRY BY STORM.”

The first scries of readings absolutely took the country by storm,
Dickens meeting with the greatest personal a flection and respect
wherever he went. In Dublin there was almost a riot. People
broke the pay-box, and freely offered £5 for a stall. In Belfast he
had enormous audiences, being compelled, he said, to turn half the
town away. The reading over, the people ran after him to look at
him. 44 Do me the honour,” said one, 44 to shake hands, Mistlier
Dickens, and God bless you, sir ; not ounly for the light you’ve been
to me this night, but to the light you’ve been to mee house, sir
(and God bless your face !), this many a year.” Men cried un-
disguisodly . — M 2.

ENTHUSIASM IN LONDON.

There was a considerable amount of anxiety among Dickens’s
intimate friends lest the indignation caused by the publication of
the 44 statement ” [published in Household Words , relative to his
separation from his wife], and still existing among a section of the
public, might find vent on his first appearance on the platform.
Arthur Smith, his manager, a timid man by nature, was especially

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

nervous ; bub X do not think Dickens was made acquainted with the
feelings of some of those by whom he was surrounded. But the
moment Dickens stepped on to the platform, walking rather stiffly,
right shoulder well forward, as usual, bud in button-hole, and gloves
in hand, all doubt was blown into the air. Ho was received with a
roar of cheering which might have been heard at Charing Cross,
and which was again and again renewed. Whatever he may have
felt, Dickens showed no emotion. Ho took his place at his reading-
desk, and made a short prefatory speech, in which ho said that,
though he had read one of his books to a London audience more than
once, this was the first time he had ventured to do so professionally ;
that he had considered the matter, and saw no reason against his
doing so, either in deterioration of dignity or anything else ; and
that, therefore, he took his place on the platform with as much
composure as he should at his own desk. Then he opened, his book,
and commenced. The book was The Cricket on the Ilearth , now
read for the first time. There was no doubt of its interest and
attraction to the audience present — ordinary upper ard lower
middle-class people. From first to last they sat in rapt suspense,
broken only by outbursts of laughter and applause ; and at the
conclusion the vehement cheering was renewed. The success of the
readings was assured. — Y .

AFFECTION SHOWN IN THE PROVINCES.

At the end of July [1858] Dickens, accompanied by Arthur Smith,
started on a provincial tour, commencing at Clifton on 2nd
August. On ‘4th August he wrote me from Plymouth : “ We
had a most noble night at Exeter last night, and turned numbers
away. Arthur is something between a Home Secretary and a
furniture dealer in Rathbone Place. He is either always corre-
sponding in the genteele^t manner, or dragging rout-seats about
without his coat.” And again, in a letter dated from the Adelphi
Hotel, Liverpool, 21st August, he says : “ A wonderful house iiere
last night, and the largest in money we have ever had. including
St. Martin’s TIall. There were 2300 people and 200 guineas. The
very books were all sold out early in the evening; and Arthur,
bathed in checks, took headers into tickets, floated on billows of
passes, dived under weirs of shillings, staggered homo faint with
gold and silver.”

Thenceforward all was plain sailing. Those “ peculiar relations
(personally affectionate, and like no other man’s) which subsist
between mo and the public,” of which Dickens had spoken in his
capacity as author, stood him in good stead in his new venture.
He was received everywhere with the greatest personal affection and
respect, and his receipts were enormous. — Y.

In March of 1858, Dickens visited Edinburgh to read his Christmas
Cared to upwards of two thousand members of the Philosophical
Institute there. After the reading was over, the Lord Provost
presented him wdth a splendid silver wassail bowl. Dickens, in

ON THE PLATFORM.

replying, said: “The first great public recognition and en-
couragement I ever received was bestowed on me by your generous
and magnificent city. To come to Edinburgh is to me like coming
home.” — // 4.

During October, 1859, Dickens gave readings at the Town Hall,
Oxford, and attracted large audiences. On one occasion the Prince
of Wales, then entering on his career as an Oxonian, was present,
and expressed considerable satisfaction at the pleasure he had
experienced in hearing him reach — 11 4.

“ ASTOUNDING RETURNS.”

Rest became an absolute necessity before the London readings
in March [ISO'i]. The financial results, however, seemed to have
compensated Dickens for these disadvantages. “ The money returns
have been quite astounding. Think of £190 a night I ” This was
in April, and on 28th June he said, “ I finished my readings on
Friday night to an enormous hall — nearly £200.” He had an offer
from Australia to read there for eight months, for a sum of £10,000. —
K 1.

THE THIRD TOUR.

The result of the negotiations with Messrs. Chappell was that Mr.
Dickens agreed to give thirty readings in London, the provinces, or
elsewhere, in consideration of the firm paying him the sum of £1500
for the course ; they undertaking all responsibility and trouble,
and paying all expenses, personal and otherwise, in connection with
the tour. . . . The sum stipulated for — namely £1500 — was to be
paid as follows : £500 on the first reading, £500 on the fifteenth,
and £500 on the termination of the agreement. On the completion
of the tour the gross receipts amounted to nearly £5000. Such a
success was all the more gratifying as Mr. Dickens had, with that
consideration for the masses which ever characterised his actions,
stipulated, at the commencement of t he engagement, that shilling
seat-holders should have as good accommodation as those who were
willing to pay higher sums for their evening's enjoyment ; 44 for,”
said* he, 44 I have been the champion and the friend of the working-
man all through my career, and it would be inconsistent, if not
unjust, to put any difficulty in the way of his attending my
readings.”— D.

A PRIVATE REHEARSAL.

No time was lost in arranging the opening reading, which was
given at St. James's Hall, London, on Tuesday evening, 10th April
1866. Independently of the interest created by the appearance of
Mr. Dickens on the platform as a public reader, there was much
excitement when it became generally known that he had decided
upon reading “ Doctor Marigold ” for the first time on this occasion.
This reading, like all the others, had been most carefully prepared ;
and, in order to test its suitability for its purpose, a private rehearsal

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

was given on 18th March at Southwick Place, Hyde Park, in a
furnished house which Mr. Dickens had taken for the season. The
audience consisted of the members of his family, and Mr. Robert
Browning, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Mr. Charles Fechter, Mr. John Forster,
Mr. Arthur Chappell, Mr. Charles Kent, and myself. It is hardly
necessary to say that the verdict was unanimously favourable.
Everybody was astonished by the extraordinary ease and fluency
with which the patter of the “ Cheap Jack ” was delivered, and the
subtlety of the humour which pervaded the wdiolo presentation.
To those present, the surprise was no less great than the results wore
pleasing ; indeed, it is hard to see how it could well have been
otherwise, for seldom in the world’s history do we find a man gifted
with such extraordinary powers, and, at tho same time, possessed
of such a love of method, such will, such energy, and such a capacity
for taking pains. An example of this is the interesting fact that,
although to many of his hearers at that eventful rehearsal of “ Doctor
Marigold,” it w as the first time it had been read, Mr. Dickens had,
since its appearance as a Christmas number, only three months
previously, adapted it as a reading, and had rehearsed it to himself
considerably over two hundred times — and this in addition to his
ordinary w ork. — D.

ABERDONIAN CAUTION.

The reading at Aberdeen in May 1866, though a success from
a monetary point of view*, was peril aps the least enthusiastically
received of any given before or since ; a fact which may be accounted
for by the remark of the local agent when I questioned him about
the probability of success : “ Wcel, Misther Doalby, I’m no pra-
pared t’ state positively what yewr actiel receats ’ll be, for ye see,
sir, amangst ma ain freends there are vairy few v/ha ha’ iver haird
o’ Cliairles Dickens.” — D.

A MISTAKE AT BIRMINGHAM.

Dickens arranged to read at Birmingham [May 1866] “ Doctor
Marigold,” and the Trial from Pickwick. From some unaccount-
able cause, in going on for the second reading, Mr. Dickens took
the wrong book to the platform with him, and before I had time
to stop him he was well on with the story of Nicholas Nickleby at
Mr. Squeers’ school. There was nothing for it but to let the reading
proceed, as proceed it did, to the end, with perfect success. The
immense audience, numbering 2100 people, remained seated, and
the mistake that had been made was pointed out to Mr. Dickens
by Mr. Wills ; whereupon, with characteristic generosity, ho at
once retunled to the platform, and in one of his appropriate and
good-humoured speeches, explained the accident to the audience,
and put it to the vote, by a show of hands, whether they would like,
after listening to him for two hours, to hear him for another half-
hour in the Trial from Pickwick . To use his own words whenever
he told the story against himself, " they did like,” as the ringing

ON THE PLATFOBM

8 »

cheer of approval with which the little speech was received amply
testified. So after two hours’ hard work, he buckled to once more,
and amidst uproarious merriment read the famous “ Trial.” — D.

Mr. Henry Wills, in a letter to his wife, thus refers to the incident :

“ We had the pleasure of meeting a small party of 2100 friends-
at the Town Hall last night. They enjoyed “ Doctor Marigold ”
immensely. Pickwick to follow. Just figure my amazement
when Dickens, instead of commencing ‘ On the morning of the
great trial, Bardell versus Pickwick,’ opened Nickleby ! I ran
out to Dolby (the manager), knowing Dickens’s exactitude, and
mistrusting my own ears, to know who was mistaken. Dolby,
staring as if I had stabbed him in the stomach, rushed out of the
hall to read the poster in the excess of his certainty that it was
Pickwick , to find that Pickwick .was announced. Meanwhile,
the breakfast at the Saracen’s Head had taken such a tight hold of
the audience (who uttered Kentish fires of laughter at every third
word) that to stop the reader and correct the mistake would havo
been madness. Poor Dickens ended Nickleby triumphantly, and
tripped down the stairs of the piatform, smiling to think that one
more of the thirty was notched off. But the people would not go,
demanded why they had not heard Pickwick, and Dickens had to*
return and good-naturedly offer to read Pickwick then, if they desired
it. Although the walls shook with applause, there were one or two-
considerate No ! No’s ! However, Pickwick he read in addition ; and
though awfully exhausted after his two hours and a half of reading,
was quite merry over the mishap, and make jokes about it till bed-
time. I am sorry to say he suffers now headache and brow neuralgia,
suro signs of excess of nervous power wasted over-night. On
such occasions he .is the most patient, plucky, make- the -best-of-
bad-luck being I ever knew. — P 5.

THE ENGLISH CLIMATE.

The readings [January 1867] began with unabated enthusiasm ;
but the reader, alas ! speedily discovered bis physical unfitness
for this arduous and exacting undertaking. Almost at the begin-
ning of the tour ho was so overcome by faintness after a reading
that he had to be carried out and laid on a sofa for half an hour,
and he attributed this indisposition to a “distressing inability to
sleep at night, and to nothing worse.” The climatic conditions
were very trying, indeed he thought it was the worst weather he
over experienced ; at Chester he read “ in a snowstorm and a fall
of ice ” — at Wolverhampton a thaw had set in and it rained furi-
ously, and touring under such circumstances fairly exhausted him.
—K 1 .

IRISH ENTHUSIASM.

(Fenian excitement in Ireland.) Notwithstanding the pre-
occupation of the public mind at this juncture [March 1867] he
was accorded a most hearty reception by the Irish people, who
flocked to the readings in large numbers. “ You will be surprised

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

to know that we have done wonders ! ” he wrote Forster. “ En-
thusiastic crowds have tilled the halls to the roof each night, and
hundreds have been turned away. At Belfast the night before
last we had £24G, 5s. In Dublin to-night everything is sold out,
and people are besieging Dolby to put chairs anywhere, in doorways,
on iny platform, in any sort of hole or corner. In short, the readings
are a perfect rage at a time when everything else is beaten down.”
—K 1 .

A FIRST NIGHT IN PHILADELPHIA.

No literary man except Thackeray ever had such a welcome
from Philadelphia as Charles Dickens received at tho Concert
Hall. The selling of the tickets two weeks before almost amounted
to a disturbance of the peace. Five hundred people in line, standing
from midnight till noon, poorly represented the general desire to
hear the great novelist on his first night. Everywhere that I
looked in the crowded hall I saw someone not unknown to fame —
someone representing either the intelligence or the beauty, the
wealth or the fashion, of Philadelphia. It was an audience which,
in the words of Serjeant Buzfuz, I might declare an enlightened,
a high-minded, a right feeling, a dispassionate, a conscientious,
a sympathising, a contemplative, and a poetical jury, to judge
Charles Dickens without fear or favour. The novelist stepped
upon the stage. His book in his hand, his bouquet in his coat —
but I will not describe to readers the face and form many of them
know so well. Mr. Dickens was received coldly. Here was an
Englishman who had pulled us to pieces and tweaked the national
nose by writing Martin Chazzlewit and American Notes. Phila-
delphia held out as long as she could. The first smile came in
when Bob Cratchit warmed himself with a candle, hut before Scrooge
had got through the first ghost the laughter was universal and
uproarious. The “ Christmas Dinner of the Crate hits ” was a
tremendous success, as was “ Scrooge’s Niece by Marriage.” There
was a young lady in white fur and blue ribbons, name unknown
to the writer, upon whose sympathies Mr. Dickens played as if she
had been a piano. A deaf man could have followed his story by
looking at her face. The goose convulsed her. The pudding
threw her into hysterics; and when the story came to the sad death
of Tiny Tim, “ my little, little child,” tears were streaming down
her cheeks. This young lady was as good as Mr. Dickens, and
all the more attractive because she couldn’t help it. Then, as a
joke began to be dimly foreseen, it was great to see the faint smile
dawning on long lines of faces, growing brighter and brighter till
it passed from sight to sound, and thundered to the roof in vast
and inextinguishable laughter . — New York Tribune , January 14,
1868.

FAREWELL TO NEW YORK.

The last reading in America was given at the Steinway Ha!!,
New York, on 20th April, 1868, the audience numbering over two

DK'KKNS A8 A ITHLIC UEAHER IN 18C1
Engraved /rum the photograph by Era little J' 1 oung

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

thousand persons. The t&sk finished, the reader was about to retire,
when a tremendous volley of cheering stopped him, and he went
forward to make a short speech, bidding his audience farewell, and
concluding with the words, “ God bless you, and God bless the land
in which I leave you.” This little impromptu oration, listened to
with rapt attention, caused immense acclamation and waving of
handkerchiefs, amid which Dickens retired from the platform,
never to reappear in public in America . — K 1.

FINANCIAL RETURNS IN AMERICA.

Prior to our visit to Philadelphia, Mr. Osgood had prepared a
statement of his accounts, up to and including the date of the last
reading given in New York, which completed a little over a quarter
of the number intended to be given in America. After paying all
the preliminary expenses of every kind, on my return to New
York on 15th January, 1868, I had been able to remit to Messrs.
Coutts’ bank in London, to the credit of Mr. Dickens, £10,000,
and had over £1000 in hand after doing this to go on with. — D .

PLATFORM APPURTENANCES.

As I believe it has not previously appeared in this country or
in America, I will give a description of the appurtenances of the
platform. At the back was a large screen consisting of a series
of woodwork frames covered with canvas ; this again was covered
with a maroon-coloured cloth, tightly stretched. In the centro of
the stage or platform was the table, on which was a slightly raised
reading-desk. On the left hand of the reader, on either side of the
table, were small projecting ledges — the one on the right for the
water-bottle and glass, the other for his pocket-handkerchief and
gloves. Further forward, and on each side of the stage, rau two
uprights, secured with copper wire “guys,” securing the batten
and reflector, and communicating above and below with another
range of lights with reflectors, so that the reader's face and figure
were fully and equally distinct to the vision of the audience, and no
effects were marred either by too much light overhead or by a
super- effulgence from below. — D.

VIVIDNESS OF HIS IMPERSONATIONS.

In A Christmas Carol, when Dickens threw himself into Bob
Cratchit, leaning over the elbow-rest upon the reading-table, with a
meek, subdued voice and a mild, timid expression of countenance,
he gave an instantaneous impression of the poor, feeble, struggling
clerk. In The Chimes he personified the group consisting of Aider-
man Cute, Filer, and the red-faced man, by rapid gradations of
voice which were perfect. That voice had wonderful flexibility.
Whether as a wheezy porter, or the vacant Toots, or the Boots at
the inn (where it sounded as though he was chewing a straw), or the
pompous Pecksniff, or the oily Mr. Mould, or the judge in the Pick-

ON THE PLATFORM.

wick trial, or little Paul Dombey, the reader managed to convey
the exact impression required, and with the utmost apparent ease. —
R 2 .

Charles Dickens was decidedly theatrical. I [Miss Henriette
Corkran] heard my mother say that she had gone to hear Dickens
read one of his works. At that particular time he happened to be
in her black books, so she made up her mind not to betray any sort
of emotion at his reading. When she returned home she confessed
that Dickens's reading was so remarkably powerful and dramatic
that she alternately laughed and cried, exactly as he wished her to
do. “ He is a wonderful magician,” my mother remarked . — C 4.

This recalls a passage in the memoirs of poor Mr. Goodall, who
describes Dickens's tribute to Daniel Maclise, who had just died,
at a Royal Academy banquet. When Dickens had ended, this is
what happened :

“ Death-like stillness came over the great room. I shall never
forget it. Mine were not the only eyes filled with teal's. The
speech had such an effect upon the whole company that by common
consent immediately it was ended ill rose from their seats, and no
other speech was heard that evening. I never witnessed such a
scene before or since at the Royal Academy.”— T.P.' s Weekly ,
November 21, 1902.

I [R. 0. Lehmann] cannot have been more than six or seven years
old when my father and mother took me to one of his readings
at, L think, St. James’s Hall. First he read the death of Paul
Dombey, which left me in floods of tears, and next came the Trial
scene from Pickwick. I shall never forget my amazement when he
assumed the character of Mr. Justice Stareleigh. The face and
figure that I knew, that 1 had seen on the stage a moment before,
seemed to vanish as if by magic, and there appeared instead a fat,
pompous, pursy little man, with a plump imbecile face, from which
every vestige of good-temper and cheerfulness— everything, in fact,
except an expression of self-sufficient stupidity —had been removed.
The upper lip had become long, the corners of the mouth drooped,
the nose was short and podgy, all the angles of the chin had gone,
the chin itself had receded into the throat, and the eyes, lately so
humorous and human, had become as malicious and obstinate as
those of a pig. It was a marvellous effort in transformation . — L 2.

A COMPANY IN HIMSELF.

Of Dickens's readings no description can convey any adequate,
impression. Ho was in himself a whole stock company. He seemed
to be physically transformed as he passed from one character to
another; he had as many distinct voices as his books had char-
acters ; he held at command the fountains of laughter and tears.
Dibkens’s voice in its every disguise was of such quality that it
reached all of those thousands in St. James’s Hall, and he stood
before us a magician. When he sat down it was not mere applause
that followed, but a passionate outburst of love for the man . — C 3.

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

LITTLE DOMBEY AND TOOTS.

The “ Story of Little Dombey,” from Dombey and Son , was always
a painful one to Mr. Dickens, and never read by him except by
particular request and under the greatest of pressure. His in-
tuitive identification of himself with his audience was the cause, in
this particular instance, of the most acute suffering ; and it was with
the greatest relief that he drew his hearers from the thraldom of
melancholy, in which they were bound in the earlier part of the
reading, by introducing Mr. Toots and his boyish absurdities. — D.

FAREWELL !

The final reading took place on 15th March 1870. The readings
selected were the Carol and the Trial from Pickwick . The reading
over, Dickens said : “ Ladies and gentlemen, it would be worse than
idle — for it would be hypocritical and unfeeling -if 1 were to dis-
guise that I close this episode in my life with feelings of very con-
siderable pain. For some fifteen years, in this hall, and in many
kindred places, I have had the honour of presenting my own
cherished ideas before you for your recognition, and, in closely
observing your reception of them. ha\e enjoyed an amount of
artistic delight and instruction which, perhaps, is given to few men
to know . . . but from these garish lights, 1 vanish now for ever-
more, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, and affectionate fare-
well.” Amidst repeated acclamations on the part of the audience,
and w'hile hats and handkerchiefs waved in every part of the hall,
Charles Dickens left the platform with quite a mournful gait and
tears rolling down his cheeks ; but he was impelled to return once
again, to be stunned by a still more rapturous outburst of applause.
The full number of readings at home and abroad, apart from charit-
able ones, was four hundred and twenty- three, which yielded
Dickens the sum of £45,000.— K 1.

forster’s scruples overruled.

From the reminiscences of Dickens by his son Charles in the
North American Review of June 1805, we gather that w hen Dickens
first thought of giving public readings from his own works Mr.
Forster tried to dissuade him from the idea. Dickens himself
feared that it would be infra dig., but he saw that 44 a great deal of
money might be made by one’s having readings of one’s own books.”
We are told that Forster’s opposition to the undertaking was due
to an intense jealousy of anything that Dickens did outside his
books. He argued that these readings wore 44 a substitution of
lower for higher aims ; a change to commonplace from more elevated
pursuits/’ and that they had so much of the character of a public
exhibition for money as to raise, in the question of respect for
Dickens’s calling as a writer, a question also of respect for him
as a gentleman. But Dickens took a clearer and a wider view, and
the result justified his confidence. Neither as a writer nor as a
gentleman did his public readings hurt him in any degree, but they

ON THE PLATFORM.

did break down His health. His second course of readings in
America was gone through with great effort and much suffering. —
Literarty Digest (New York, June 1895).

HOW DICKENS “ KILLED HIMSELF.”

“ There was something of almost wilful exaggeration, of a defiance
of any possible over-fatigue, either of mind or body, in the feverish
sort of energy with which these readings were entered upon and
carried out.” He had plenty of symptoms of his approaching
collapse : “ Among other serious symptoms he noticed that he could
only read the halves of the letters over the shop doors on his right.
The old elasticity was impaired, the old unflagging vigour often
faltered. One night at the St. James’s Hall, I remember, he found
it impossible to say Pickwick, and called him Piekswick, and Picnic,
and Peckwieks, and all sorts of names except the right, with a
comical glance of surprise at the occupants of the front scats, which
were always reserved for his family and friends. Indeed, when my
father described himself, in a letter written to Mr. Dolby on the very
eve of the breakdown, as being 4 .. little out of sorts,’ he was, in
fact, on the brink of an attack of paralysis of the left side, and
probably of apoplexy.” What finished him was a farewell series of
twelve readings at St. James’s Hall. The state in which he was can
be imagined from the instructions given to young Dickens by his
father’s medical attendant: 44 1 have had some steps put up against
the side of the platform, Charley,” said Mr. Beard, who was con-
stantly in attendance. 44 You must be there every night, and if
you sec your father falter in the least, you must run up and catch
him and bring him off with me, or, by Heaven, ho’ll die before them
all.” — Quoted from Charles Dickens, the younger, in the North
American Review , quoted in Review of Reviews, July 1895.

AND WHY ?

Dickens was struck down by apoplexy — a condition which Sir
Thomas Watson, on examination fourteen months before, had fore-
seen. 44 The state thus described,” says Sir Thomas Watson after the
consultation in April ’09, 44 showed plainly that C. D. had been on
the brink of an attack of paralysis of his left side, and possibly of
apoplexy. It was, no doubt , the result of extreme hurry , overwork ,
and excitement , incidental to his readings .” It will be asked for what
purpose, to what end, were these fatal labours undertaken, these
desperate exertions made ? Not the acquisition of fame. For
thirty years Charles Dickens had enjoyed the utmost renown that
literary genius could possibly earn. Ilis books wero read, his name
was loved and honoured, wherever the English language was spoken.
His Sovereign had sent for him to visit her, and working-men, passing
along the streets and recognising him by his photograph, w r ould
pull off their hats and give him kindly greeting. The sentiments
of the entire civilised world find expression in the lady who stopped
him in the streets of York, and said, 44 Mr. Dickens, will you let mo
touch the hand that has tilled my house with many friends ? ”

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

It was a law of his existence that his foot should be always in the
stirrup and his sword always unsheathed. He had, moreover,
a chivalrous regard to the public. He was their devoted servant,
and he was anxious to spend his life-blood in their cause. Conse-
quently, even when he knew his power as a novelist was on the
wane — according to Forster it had, indeed, been on the wane so far
back as the days of Bleak House — he determined to seek a new
sphere, and one which to his histrionic temperament was singularly
congenial, in his readings. This I [Edmund Yates] believe to be the
true account of the reasons which weighed with him in selecting
that arduous ordeal which brought his life to its premature close.
Other reasons of a more melodramatic and sensational character
might be cited, but it is my conviction that they would be less to be
trusted . — Y

DICKENS AND THE STAGE

Of a long series of playbills of amateur performances, which are
in my possession, and which, as it were, “dot” the whole course of
“ Boz’s ” life, one is unique and of singular interest ; for it is, I
believe, the only official record of a period of Dickens’s course which
is comparatively blank — namely, about the time of the early
thirties. This bill is significant of lna exuberant, buoyant nature,
and of the enthusiasm which made him enlist his family and friends
in the corps. Tho scene was at their own house, and the young
fellow announces himself at the top of the bill as “ Stage Manager.” „
We lind him supporting the whole burden and taking tho leading
parts. Tho cast included his father, his two sisters and two
brothers, his cousin Barrow, members of tho Austin family — one
of whom married his sister — and the young Kolle, a great friend and
comrade of his . — F 2.

THE CARPENTER’S LAMENT.

If ever a man seemed to have been born for one particular pursuit
it was my father in connection with the stage. He was, indeed,
a bom actor, and no line of character that I ever saw him essay
came amiss to him. From Captain Bobadil to Justice Shallow,
from old-fashioned farce, such as Two o'clock in the Morning and
Animal Magnetism , to the liveliest Charles Mathewsisms, and thence
again to the intenscst Frederic Lemaitre melodrama, from the
tremendous power of the Sikes and Nancy reading to the absurdities
of Serjeant Buzfuz, from the pathos of Little Dombey to the broad
humours of Mrs. Gamp, everything seemed to come natural to him.
That ho brought to his acting the same earnestness and energy
that ho gave to everything else is of course true, but no amount of
work could have produced tho same result if tho power had not
been there, strongly, unusually strongly, developed. There was a
quaint professional touch, and yet one easy to understand, about
tho remark which a stage carpenter once made to him during tho
progress of some amateur performances at the Haymarket Theatre,

‘ Ah, Mr. Dickens, it was a sad loss to the public when you took to
writing,” — Charles Dickens, the younger, in North American Review ,
-May 1895.

CHARLES DICKENS AS CAl’TAlX BoBADIL IX “EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR
From the painting hy ('. R. Leslie , R.A.

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

LOVE OF THE THEATRE.

Dickens was an actor of no mean capacity. In his early days of
reporting he made an attempt to escape from that ill -paid drudgery
by way of the stage. When fame came to him as a writer his old
predilection asserted itself, and he was never so happy as when
playing in amateur theatricals. While writing The Cricket on the
Hearth he arranged a performance of Jonson’s Every Man in His
Humour , with himself in the part of Bobadil. The other players
included Jerrold, Lemon, Leech, and Forster. The theatre engaged
was Miss Kelly’s in Dean Street. The “ troupe ” afterwards took
Not so Bad as We Seem on tour, and this adventure befell at Sunder-
land :

“ When we got here at noon, it appeared that the hall was a
perfectly new one, and had only had the slates put upon the roof
by torchlight overnight. Further, that the proprietors of some
opposition rooms had declared the building to be unsafe, and that
there was a panic in the town about it. . . . When the curtain went
up and I saw the great sea of faces rolling up to the roof, I looked
here and looked there, and thought, I saw the gallery out of the
perpendicular and fancied the lights in the ceiling were not straight.
Rounds of applause were perfect agony to me, I was so afraid of
their effect upon the building. I had a palpitation of the heart if
any of our people stumbled up or down a stair. The anxiety of my
mind was so intense, that I am half-dead to-day.” — Da ily Mail,
March 7, 1003.

AT THE OLD ROYALTY.

On the 20th September 1845, I was instructed to accompany Mr,
Charles Dickens, Mr. Mark Lemon, and Mr. Douglas Jerrold to Miss
Kelly’s theatre (known in these days as “ The Royalty ”) to attend
to the final arrangements for the performance by the distinguished
amateurs on the following night, which prepared the way for subse-
quent representations, in town and country, in aid of the funds for
the purchase of Shakespeare's House and later of the Guild of
Literature and Art. On arriving at the theatre no time was lost
in proceeding to business — the two first-named gentlemen divesting
themselves of their coats, and commencing to put the dress circle
and boxes in order, by numbering the seats. The pockets of th&
puce-coloured waistcoat, of velvet texture — a favourite article of
dress with the immortal “ Boz ” — served on the occasion as a
receptacle for the bradawl and tin tacks, Mr. Dickens himself going
about with hammer in hand. Mr. Jerrold' s work was confined to
the stage — a colder berth, it would appear, as the popular writer
of Mrs. Caudle s Curtain Lectures did not remove his outer garment.
He saw to the scenery, and had to prepare a fire, in theatrical fashion,
with slacked lime and red tinsel. Having completed the latter task,
Mr. Jerrold rose from his stooping position, and called “ Lemon, how
will that do ? ” to which the Editor of Punch replied, “ The smoke
is all right, but a little more tinsel would improve the fire.” This

100

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

was done, and the effect approved of. So far so good, and Mr.
Jerrold soon vacated the “ boards ” and made his appearance in
the “ front of the house ” — suggesting some refreshment to the
toilers in the boxes, which was readily agreed to. — John Britton, in
the Daily News , January 21, 1890.

MRS COWDEN-CLARKE's RECOLLECTIONS.

These private theatricals [that is, the private theatricals in which
Mrs. Cowden-Clarke took part at the house of Mrs. Loudon, the
authoress] led to one of the most peculiarly bright episodes of my
life. At a party at Mrs. Tagart's house I was introduced by Leigh
Hunt to Charles Dickens, with whom we had been for some time
acquainted through his delightful books, and he had been always
spoken of in our family circle as “dear Dickens” or “darling
Dickens ; 55 therefore it may easily be conceived how pleased and
proud I felt to be thus personally made known to him. He and l
fell at once into liveliest conversation ; and just before he was
taking leave, lie said, “ I hear you have been playing Mrs. Malaprop
lately.” I answered, “ Yes : and 1 hear you are going to get up
an amateur performance of The Merry IFum so 1 could bo your
Dame Quickly.” I saw that he did not take this seriously ; accord-
ingly, 1 wrote to him, a day or two after, telling him l w as in earnest
when 1 had made the offer to act Dame Quickly, if he cared to let
me do so.

The note I received in reply began with a sentence that threw me
into a rapture of excitement and delight. The sentence was as
follows :

“ Dear Mrs. Cowden-Clarke, — I did not understand, when 1
had the pleasure of conversing with you the other evening, that
you had really considered the subject and desired to play. But I
am very glad to understand it now, and 1 am sure there will be a
universal sense among us of the grace and appropriateness of such
a proceeding. . . . Will you receive this as a solemn ‘call* to
‘ rehearsal 7 of The Merry Wive.s at Miss Kelly’s theatre to-momnv,
Saturday weeJc f at seven in the evening ? ”

Although I am naturally shy, I have never felt shy when acting,
but it must be confessed that “ rehearsal ” w as somewhat of a
heart-beating affair to me, as I had to meet and speak bofore such a
group of distinguished men as John Forster, editor of the Examine % ;
Mark Lemon, editor of Punch ; John Leech, its inimitable illus-
trator ; the admirable artists, Augustus Egg and Frank Stone,
all of whom are fellow-actors in Charles Dickens’s Amateur Company.
But he, as manager, presenting me to them with his usual grace and
kindliness, together with my own firm resolve to speak out clearly,
just as if I were at performance instead of rehearsal, helped me
capitally through this first and most formidable evening. On the
night wnen The Merry Wives was first performed at the Haymarket
Theatre (15th May 1848), I felt not a shadow of that stage fright,
although I had to make my entrance before a select London

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

101

audience. . . . The performance of The Merry Wives at the Hay
market Theatre was followed by that of Ben Jonson’s Every Man
in His Humour , and Kenney’s farce of Love, Law , and Physic on the
next evening but one (17th May 1848). In the former I played
Tib, Cob’s wife ; and in the latter, Mrs. Hilary. . . . Charles
Dickons, supreme as manager, super-excellent as actor, and ardently
enthusiastic in his enjoyment of exercising his skill in both capaci-
ties, organised a series of provincial engagements for the performance
of his Amateur Company. At Glasgow, on the 20th July 1848, we
gave Usui Up ; Love , Law and Physic , and Two o'clock in the Morning .
It was our last performance together, and we not only felt regret at
the time for this close of our happy comradeship, but dear Charles
Dickens’s letters for a long time afterwards expressed his pain at its
cessation. Genial, kind, most sympathetic and fascinating w r as his
companionship, and very precious to me was his friendship . — C 2.

ENERGY AT REHEARSAL.

Unlike most professional rehearsals, where waiting about, dawd-
ling, and losing time, seem to bo the order of the day, the rehearsals
under Charles Dickens’s stage-managership were strictly devoted
to work— serious earnest work; the consequence was that, when
the evening of performance came, the pieces went olf with a smooth-
ness and polish that belong only to finished stage-business and
practised performers. He was always there among the first arrivals
at rehearsals, and remained in a conspicuous position during their
progress till the very last moment of conclusion. He had a small
table placed rather to one side of the stage, at which he generally
sat, as the scenes went on in which he himself took no part. On
this table rested a moderate-sized box ; its intei ior divided into
convenient compartments for holding papers, letters, etc., and this
interior was always the very pink of neatness and orderly arrange-
ment. He never seemed to overlook anything. With all this
supervision, however, it was pleasant to remark the utter absence
of dictatorialness or arrogation of superiority that distinguished
his mode of ruling his troupe : he exerted his authority firmly and
perpetually ; but in such a manner as to mako it universally felt
to be for no purpose of self-assertion or self-importance ; on the
contrary, to be for the sole purpose of ensuring general success to
their united efforts . — C 1.

AS JUSTICE SHALLOW.

The date of our first night at the Hay market Theatre was the 15 th
of May 1848, when the entertainment consisted of The Merry Wives
of Windsor and Animal Magnetism . The “make up” of Charles
Dickens as Justice Shallow w r as so complete that his own identity
was almost unrecognisable, when he came on to the stage, as the
curtain rose, in company with Sir Hugh and Master Slender ; but
after a moment’s breathless pause, the whole house burst forth
into a roar of applausive reception, which testified to the boundless

102

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

delight of the assembled audience on beholding the literary idol of
the day, actually before them. His impersonation was perfect:
the old, stiff limbs, the senile stoop of the shoulders, the head bent
with age, the feeble step, with a certain attempted smartness of
carriage characteristic of the conceited Justice of the Peace, — were
all assumed and maintained with wonderful accuracy ; while the
articulation, — part lisp, part thickness of utterance, part a kind
of impeded sibillation, like that of a voice that “ pipes and whistles
in the sound ” through loss of teeth — gave consummate effect to
his mode of speech . — C 1.

THE DOCTOR AND LA FLEUR.

In Mrs. Inchbald’s amusing farce of Animal Magnetism , the
two characters of the Doctor and La Fleur, as played by Charles
Dickens and Mark Lemon, formed the chief points of drollery : but
in the course of the piece, ail exquisitely ludicrous bit of what is
technically called “ gag ” w r as introduced into the scene w here
George Lewes, as the Marquis, pretends to fall into a fit of rapturous
delirium, exclaiming —

“ What thrilling transport rushes to my heart ; Nature appeal’s
to my ravished eyes more beautiful than poets ever formed !
Aurora dawns — the feathered songsters chant their most melodious
strains — the gentle zephyrs breathe,” etc.

At the words, “Aurora dawns,” Dickens interrupted with “ Who
daw ns ? ” And being answ ered with “ Aurora,” exclaimed “ La ! ”
in such a tone of absurd wonderment, as if he thought anybody
rather than Aurora may been have expected to dawn. — C 1.

CAPTAIN BOBADIL.

The w r ay in which Charles Dickens impersonated that arch-
braggart, Captain Bobadil, was a veritable piece of genius : from
the moment when he is discovered lolling at full length on a bench
in his lodging, calling for a “ cup o’ small beer ” to cool down the
remnants of excitement from last night’s carouse with a set of
roaring gallants, till his final boast of having “ not so much as once
offered to resist ” the “ coarse fellow ” w ho set upon him in the open
streets, he was capital. The mode in which he went to the back of
the stage before he made his exit from the first scene of Act ii.,
uttering the last word of the taunt he flings at Downright with a
bawl of stentorian loudness — “ Scavenger ! ” and then darted off
the stage at full speed ; the insolent scorn of his exclamation, “ This
a Toledo ? pish ! ” bending the sword into a curve as ho spoke ; the
swaggering assumption of case with which ho leaned on the shoulder
of his interlocutor, puffing aw r ay his tobacco smoke and puffing it
off as “your right Trinidado ; ” the grand impudence of his lying
when explaining how' he w'ould dispatch scores of the enemy,—
“ challenge twenty more, kill them ; twenty more, kill them ;
twenty more, kill them too ; ” ending by “ twenty score, that’s
two hundred ; two hundred a day, five days a thousand ; forty

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

103

thousand ; forty times five, five times forty, two hundred days kills
them all up by computation,” rattling the words off while making
an invisible sum of addition in the air, and scoring it conclusively
with an invisible line underneath, — were all the very height of fun.

It was noteworthy, as an instance of the forethought as to effect
given to even the slightest points, that he and Leech (who played
Master Mathew) had their stage-wigs made, for the parts they
played in Ben Jonson’s comedy, of precisely opposite cut : Bobadil’s
being fuzzed out at the sides and extremely bushy, while Master
Mathew’s was fiat at the ears and very highly peaked above his
forehead. In the green-room, between the acts, after Bobadil
had received his drubbing and been well cudgelled in the fourth
act, and has to reappear in the first scene of the fifth act, I saw
Charles Dickens wetting the plume of vari-coloured feathers in his
hat, and taking some of them out, so as to give an utterly crest-
fallen look to his general air and figure. “ Don’t take out the white
feather ! ” I said ; it was pleasant to see the quick glance up with
which he recognised the point of my meaning. He had this de-
lightful, bright, rapid glance of intelligence in his eye whenever
anything was said to please him ; and it was my good hap many
times to see this sudden light flash forth . — C 1.

FLEXIBLE.

In token of Charles Dickens’s appropriateness of gesture and
dramatic discrimination, I may instance his deft mode of entree on
the stage with me as Dame Quickly and as Mi's. Hilary. Where
Justice Shallow comes hurriedly in with the former, Act in. Scene
4, saying to her, “ Break their talk, Mistress Quickly; ” he used to
have hold of my arm, partly leaning on it, partly leading me on by
it, — just like an old man with an inferior : but — as the curtain rose
to the ringing of bells, the clattering of horses, the blowing of mail-
coach horn, the voices of passengers calling to waiter and chamber-
maid, etc., at the opening of Love, Law , and Physic — Charles Dickens
used to tuck me under his arm with the free-and-easy familiarity
of a lawyer patronising an actress whom he chances to find his
fellow-traveller in a stage-coach, and step smartly on the stage,
with — “Come, bustle, bustle; tea and coffee for "the ladies. 1 * It
is something to remember, having been tucked under the arm by
Charles Dickens, and had one’s hand hugged against his side ! One
thinks better of one’s hand ever after. Ho used to be in such a
state of high spirits when he played Flexible, and so worked himself
into hilarity and glee for the part, that he more than once said in
those days, “Somehow, 1 never see Mi's. Cowden-Clarke, but I feel
impelled to address her with ‘ Exactly ; and thus have I learned
from his own obliging communication, that he is the rival of my
friend. Captain Danvers ; who, fortunately for the safety of Mr;
Log’s nose, happened to be taking the air on the box.’ ” And he
actually did, more than once, utter these words (one of Flexible’s
first speeches to Mrs. Hilary) when we met. He was very fond of
this kind of reiterated joke.— C I.

104

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE,

MR. SNOBBINGTON.

On our journey down to Birmingham I enjoyed a very special
treat. Charles Dickens — in his usual way of sparing no pains that
could ensure success — asked mo to hear him repeat his part in Two
o'clock in the Morning , which, he and Mark Lemon being the only
two persons acting therein, was a long one. He repeated throughout
with such wonderful verbal accuracy that I could scarcely believe
what I saw and heard as I listened to him, and kept my eyes fixed
upon the page. Not only every word of the incessant speaking
part, but the stage directions — which in that piece are very numerous
and elaborate — he repeated verbatim. He evidently committed to
memory all he had to do as w ell as all he had to say in this extremely
comic trifle of one act and one scene. Who that beheld the con-
vulsive w rithes and spasmodic draw-up of his feet on the rung of the
chair, and the tightly-held coverlet round his shivering body just
out of bed, as he watched in ecstasy of impatience the invasion of
his peaceful chamber by that horribly intrusive Stranger, can ever
forget Charles Dickens playing Mr. Snobbington ? — C 1.

A “ GAMP ’’-LIKE CHARACTER.

Speaking of Dickens’s acting in Not so Bad as we Seem (the
comedy written by Bulwer Lytton in aid of the Guild of Literature
and Art), Mr. R. H. Horne (in his Recollections of Contemporaries)
says :

“ The character and costume of 4 Lord Wilmot, a young man
at the head of the Mode , more than a century ago,’ did not suit him.
His bearing on the stage, and the tone of his voice, were too rigid,
hard, and quarterdeck-like, for such ‘ rank and fashion.’ and his
make-up, w r ith the three-cornered, gold-laced, cocked hat, black
curled wig, huge sleeve cuffs, long flapped waistcoat, knee-breeches
and shoe-buckles, were not carried off with the proper air ; so that
he would have made a good portrait of a captain of a Dutch priva-
teer, after having taken a capital prize. When he shouted in praise of
the wine of Burgundy it far rather suggested fine kegs of Schiedam.”

In Mr. Nightingale's Diary , however, a great success was obtained.
This little piece had hardly any plot, and appears to have been
somewhat of the nature of what is, now-a-days, known as a “ variety
entertainment.” In it Dickens appeared in five different characters,
namely, Sam Weller ; Mr. Gabblewig, an over-voluble barrister;
a hypochondriac ; Mrs. Gamp (“ not the real Mrs. Gamp, but only a
near relation ”) ; and an old sexton, ninety years of age. He also
took part in a broadsword combat, fought a la GYuminlos.

In a critical account of these performances which appeared in
Bentley's Miscellany , for June 1851, great praise is bestowed upon
Dickens’s impersonation of this Mrs. Gamp-like character . — P 2.

Mark Lemon, Dickens, and Douglas Jerrold, I [Sir Joseph Crowe]
had the pleasure of seeing more than once, acting in company with
John Forster in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour. Each
one of the performers was perfect. — C 6.

106

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

THE OLD LIGHTHOUSE-MAN.

In his Journal of a London Playgoer , Mr. Henry Morley thus
speaks of one of the private performances of Wilkie Collins’s drama,
The Lighthouse :

“ July 14, 1855. — On Tuesday evening, at Campden House,
Kensington, the residence of Colonel Waugh, semi-private theatricals
were given, with a charitable purpose, and with striking success,
under the management of Mr. Charles Dickens. At Campden
House there is a miniature theatre, complete with pit and boxes,
stage and footlights. For the benefit of the funds of the Bourne-
mouth Sanatorium for Consumptive Patients, the amateurs per-
formed in this little theatre before a crowded audience, composed
principally of ladies, a new two-act play by Mr. Wilkie Collins, and
a two-act farce. The play was called The Lighthouse , and told a
tale of Eddystono in the old times. It was, in its principal
parts, acted by distinguished writers, with whose artistic skill
upon the stage the public has been for some time familiar.
The three lighthouse-men are at first shown cut off by a
month’s storm from the mainland. They are an old man and
his son, together with the father of the young man’s sweetheart.
The old man’s memory is haunted by what he believes to have been
his passive consent to a most foul murder. Weakened by starva-
tion, his brain becomes wholly possessed by dread of this crime.
The spectre of the supposed murdered lady seems to stand at his
bedside and bid him speak. He does speak, and, possessed with a
wild horror at all he recollects, reveals to his son his shame. Upon
the acting of this character depends the whole force of the story,
as presented to the audience, and it is in the hands of a master.
He is a rough man, whose face has been familiar for years with wind
and spray, haggard and wild just now, and something light-headed,
oppressed not more by conscience than by hunger. He tells bis
tale and his son turns from him, shrinks from Ids touch, struck down
by horror of the crime, and the humiliation to himself involved in it.
Relief comes to the party soon after this ; they arc fed, and the
physical depression is removed. Eager then to regain his son’s
esteem, and cancel the disclosure of his secret, the old lighthouse-
man changes in manner. By innumerable master-touches on the
part of the actor, we are shown what his rugged ways have been of
hiding up the knowledge that stirs actively within his conscience ;
but his effort to be bold produces only nervous bluster, and his
frantic desire to recover his son’s respect, though ho may take him
by the throat to extort it from him, is still mixed up w ith a horrible
sense of blood-guiltiness, wonderfully expressed by little instinctive
actions. I w ill not follow the story to its last impressive moment of
rough, nervous, seaman’s prayers, in which the old man stands
erect, with his hands joined over his head, overpowered bv the
sudden removal of the load that has so long weighed upon his heart.
But to the last that piece of the truest acting was watched with
minute attention by the company assembled ; and rarely has acting
on a public stage better rewarded scrutiny.”

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

107

The actor, of course, was Dickens, and it is worth noting that
Carlyle compared his wild picturesqueness in this exacting part to
the famous figure in Nicholas Poussin’s bacchanalian dance in the
National Gallery.— P 2.

AS STAGE MANAGER.

It was, however, not merely as an actor that the novelist justified
the Haymarket stage-carpenter’s enthusiasm, as will be seen in
his son’s account of the production of Wilkie Collins’s exciting
and ingenious drama, The Lighthouse , for which Dickens wrote
a prologue, which he delivered himself in the tiny theatre fitted up
in the schoolroom at Tavistock House •

tc At the cue ‘ Eddystono Lighthouse 5 the green curtain was
raised and displayed, to the unbounded astonishment of the audience,
Stanfield’s picture ; and the words 1 billows rise ’ were my signal —
I was in charge of the storm — to let loose the elements. We had
all the correct theatrical weather out in the hall ; the sort of silk
grindstone for the wind, — 'Marcus Stone, now R.A., turned the
wind, if I remember rightly, — the long box of rain, the flash for the
lightning, the sheet of iron for the rattle of the thunder, besides
half a dozen cannon-balls to roll about on the floor to simulate the
shaking of the lighthouse as it was struck by the waves. It was
nervous work, this riding on the whirlwind and directing the storm.
It had to be done all through the first act exactly at the word,
of course, and only for a rigidly defined time, and I could always
tell by the very look of my father’s shoulders at rehearsal, as he
sat on the stage with his back to me, that he w r as ready for the
smallest mistake, and that if I didn't wave that- flag at exactly
the right moment, or if the component parts of my storm were at
all backward in attending to their business, there would promptly
come that fatal cry of ‘ Stop ! ’ which pulled everything up short
and heralded a wigging for somebody. The window of the light-
house room had to be opened, with great difficulty in the teeth of
the gale, two or three times in the course of the act, and then my
storm and I all went raving mad together, while Stanfield — I can
see now his jolly red sailor face beaming with excitement and
delight — crouching against the scene near the aperture, threw salt
on the stage to represent (I am afraid rather indifferently, though
he thought it all right) the flying spray. Three times we played
The Lighthouse , and each time with quite astounding success.” —
Charles Dickens, the younger, in North American Review, May 1895.

THE QUEEN AND CHARLES DICKENS.

Two or three times more Frozen Deep w r as given in the Liliputian
playhouse to crowxled audiences of ninety. It was repeated for
the benefit of the Jerrold Fund at the Free Trade Hall in Man-
chester, and also in I^ondon, on a memorable occasion described
below :

“ Also we had the honour of giving a private performance at the

108

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Gallery of Illustration before Her Ma jesty the Queen and the Prince
Consort, and I can well recall the excitement which was caused
among the younger members of the company by the presence of
the Princess Royal and the Crown Prince of Prussia, then just
engaged to be married. Of the difficulty that stood in the way
of my father’s paying his respects to Her Majesty that night in
response to her expressed desire, he wrote :

“ 4 My gracious Sovereign was so pleased that she sent round
begging me to go and sec her, and accept her thanks. I replied that
1 was in my farce dress, and must beg to be excused. Whereupon
she sent again, saying that the dress 4 4 could not be so ridiculous
as that,” and repeating the request. I sent my duty in reply,
but again hoped Her Majesty would have the kindness to excuse
my presenting myself in a costume and appearance that were not
my own.’

44 This excuse commended itself to Her Majesty’s invariable tact
and consideration, and my father carried his point, and it was
thirteen years before the Queen had an opportunity of thanking
him personally for the evening's entertainment.” — Ibid.

[The performance honoured by Queen Victoria took place in
1857. Dr. Sidney Lee tells us, by the way, that proposals, which
came to nothing, were made to the novelist to read the Christmas
Carol at Court in 1858, and that later Her Majesty purchased the
copy of this work which the author had presented to Thackeray.
Dickens visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace in March 1870,
when she handed him a copy of her Leaves , with the autograph
inscription, 44 From the humblest of writers to one of the greatest.”
See Queen Victoria's Biography, pp. 403-4.]

4< A BUDDING CONGREVE.”

Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, in his Day with Charles Dickens , gives a
letter addressed to Mr. Douglas Jerrold, in which Dickens, writing
in June 1843, says :

44 1 walk up and down the street at the back of the theatre every
night, and peep in at the green-room window, thinking of the
time when 4 Dick-ens ’ will be called for by excited hundreds, and
won’t come — till Mr. Webster should enter from his dressing-
room, and quelling the tempest with a smile, beseech that wizard,
if he be in the house (here he looks up at my box), to accept the
congratulations of the audience, and indulge them with the sight
of the man who had got five hundred pounds in money, and it’s
impossible to say how much in laurels. Then I should come for-
ward and bow, once, twice, thrice — roars of approbation. Brayvo !
brarvo ! Hooray l hoorar ! hooroar ! — one cheer more — and
asking Webster home to supper, should declare eternal friendship
for that public-spirited individual, which Talfourd (the vice) will
echo with all his heart and soul, and with tears in his eyes, adding
in a perfectly audible voice, and in the same breath, that 4 he’s a
very wretched eweature, but better than Macweady any way, for ho

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

109

wouldn't play Ion when it was given to him.’ After which he
will propose said Macready’s health in terms of red-hot eloquency.
—I am always, my dear Jerrold, faithfully your friend,

“The Congreve of the Nineteenth Century.
“(Which I mean to be called in the Sunday papers.)

“ P.S. — I should dedicate it to Webster, beginning :

“ ‘ My dear Sir, — W hen yOu first proposed to stimulate the
slumbering dramatic talent of England, I assure you I had not the
least idea, etc. etc. etc.’ ” — P 2.

his “ day dream.”

That the details of theatrical management had a peculiar fascina-
tion for him is instanced in the following anecdote, told by Mr.
Charles Kent in his Charles Dickens as a Reader (K 6) :

“ Going round by way of Lambeth one afternoon,’ says Mr.
Kent, “ in the early summer of 1870, we had skirted the Thames
along the Surrey bank, had crossed the river higher up, and, on our
way back, were returning at our leisure through Westminster,
when, just as we were approaching the shadow of the Old Abbey
at Poet’s Corner, under the roof- beams of which he was so soon to
be laid in his grave, with a rain of tears and flowers, he abruptly
asked, ‘ What do you think would be the realisation of one of my
most cherished day-dreams ? ’ adding instantly, without waiting
for my answer, ‘ To settle dow n for the remainder of my life within
easy distance of a great theatre, in the direction of which I should
hold supreme authority. It should be a house, of course, having
a skilled and noble company, and one in every way magnificently
appointed. The pieces acted should be dealt with according to
my pleasure, and touched up here and there in obedience to my
own judgment ; the players as well as the plays being absolutely
under my command. There,’ said he laughingly, and in a glow T at
the mere fancy, ‘ that's my day-dream ! ’ ” — P 2.

THE STAGE IN THE NOVELS.

While Dickens saw ail that was most amusing, grotesque, tawdry,
and even humiliating, in some phases of theatrical life, he touched
the subject with so delicate and humorous a hand, that not even
tho most ardent stickler for the honour of the actor and the position
of his art can take exception to it. In the Pickwick Papers the drama
is chiefly represented by that amusing vagabond, Mr. Alfred Jingle,
who, albeit not an ornament to his profession, was, no doubt, in
his own lino of business, a very excellent actor. It was to Mac-
ready “ as a slight token of admiration and regard,” that Dickens
inscribed the pages of Nicholas Nicklcbi/ , wherein that famous group
of theatrical characters who gathered around tho standard of Mr.
Vincent Crummies were introduced to tho world. In LMe Dorrit
there is a very touching description of poor old Frederick Dorrit
in the days when ho played tho clarionet in a small London theatre,
and a very graphic description of a ballet rehearsal, which took

110

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

place on the day when Little Dorrit herself, in her anxiety con-
cerning her flighty sister Fanny, found her way into the mysterious
world “ behind the scenes.” In Great Expectations , Dickens re-
turned to his earlier and humorous view of theatrical life. From
the moment when the appreciative reader is introduced to the
pompous, Roman-nosed, parish clerk. Mr. Wopsle, he finds himself
in the best of good company, and when Mr. Wopsle changes his
name to Waidengarver, and tries his fortune on the stage, he is
seen at his greatest ; albeit Joe Gargery expressed it as his opinion
that in his change of life he had “ had a drop.” Very incomplete
would be this portion of the writer’s task without due mention being
made of the P. Salcy Family, whose names figure in that chapter
of The U ncommercial Traveller , entitled 44 In tho French Country.”
— P 2 .

THE NOVELS ON TITE STAGE.

In the heyday of his fame Dickens's works were constantly being
dramatised, often against the novelist's will. For years, in fact,
the “ adapter ” was his b te voire. One, Mr. Stirling, in particular
aroused his wrath. While Nicholas Nickleby was still appearing
in serial form, the enterprising dramatist 44 seized upon it without
leave” (the words are Forster's;, “hacked, cut, and garbled its
dialogue to the shape of one or two favourite actors ; invented for
it a plot and an ending of his own, and produced it at the Adelphi.”
There 44 the outraged author ” saw the play.

Dickens found words of praise for the manner in which the piece
was presented ; but he punished the audacious Mr. Stirling by
introducing and denouncing him at Mr Crummies' s farewell supper.
Another of the swarm of 44 adapters ” was one MoncriefI, who
dramatised the same novel. By this time the novelist was so
indignant, so despairing of any remedy, that he embarked upon a
sort of 44 wordy warfare” with Mr. MoncriefI, who retaliated by
publishing a long and vigorously indited advertisement.

In later years the novelist was more fortunate in the adaptations
made of his novels and in the actors who impersonated his immortal
characters. Sir Henry Irving played Jingle, Mr. Toole appeared
as Serjeant Buzfuz and the Artful Dodger, while Mr. Lionel Brough
achieved some success in the part of Tilly vS lowboy. — Daily Mail ,
March 7, 1903.

NICKLEBY AND OLIVER TWIST.

A performance of Mr. Edward Stirling's version [of Nicholas
Nickleby] at Worthing was not given under the advantages of the
one that won some praise from Dickens at the Adelphi.

44 For my benefit,” says Mr. Stirling, “ Nicholas Nickleby was an-
nounced. Without tho Dotheboys Hall scholars this performance
could not, however, take place. And here was the awkward dilemma.
Worthing mothers of the poorer classes did not countenance play-
acting, believing Old Nick to be in some way connected with it.

JOSEPH JEFFERSON AS CALEB PLUMMER IN ‘'THU
CRICKET ON THE HEARTH "

As performed on the American stage

11!

112

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

A local Figaro helped me out of my difficulty. The professor of
the razor did a bit of most things at his odd and leisure moments.
He was a performer on the French horn, a bird-fancier, newsvendor,
corn-cutter — Heaven knows what besides — a regular Caleb Quotem,
in short. ‘ I’ll get you fifty, sir. never fear.’ And he was as good
as his word. Lured from the by-streets and alleys by his horn,
like the children in tho 4 Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ the small fry fol-
lowed him to the theatre yard ; once there, Figaro closed the gates
upon Mr. Squeers’s children. Amidst crying and moaning they
were placed on the stage, sitting on benches, and kept in order
by Figaro’s cane — poor children, completely bewildered. When
the treacle was administered, most of them cried. This delighted
the audience, thinking it so natural (so it was). At nine o’clock,
the act over, our cruel barber threw' open the gates, driving his
flock out, with a pleasant intimation of what they would catch
when they arrived home. Mothers, fathers, sisters, in wild dis-
order, had been scouring the town for their runaways, and the
police were completely puzzled and at their wits’ ends at such a
wholesale kidnapping. Figaro was nearly torn to pieces when the
truth w r as discovered .” — P 2.

Nicldeby and Oliver Twist were, at the Adelphi, exceptional
successes. — Y .

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL.

When the Christmas Carol was played at the Adelphi, w r ith Toole
as Bob Cratchit, much realism was got out of the Cratchit Christmas
dinner scene, a real roast goose and a real plum-pudding being
served up hot every night. Tiny Tim was played by a somewhat
emaciated Little girl, who sat by the fireside and was fed with dainty
morsels by the other little Cratchits, w ho clustered about the dinner-
table, and who, needless to say, were as willing to play as good a
knife and fork on the stage as they were supposed to do in the book.

Of all the little Cratchits, however, this Tiny Tim proved the
most voracious. Like his famous young relative, Oliver Twist,
he always wanted “ more,” and night after night such large portions
of goose and plum-pudding w r ere handed to this exacting and hungry
little invalid, that even the good-natured Toole grew annoyed,
feeling that the poetry of the scene was being missed, and at last
became absolutely angry with the child for its supposed gluttony.
Being at length taken to task on the subject, poor Tim made a
confession. The child had a sister (a not too well-fed sister) em-
ployed in the theatre. The fire by which it sat was a 44 stage fire,”
through which anything could easily be conveyed to one waiting
on the other side, and poor little Tim’s goose and pudding wen?
more than shared each night. When Toole told this story to
Dickens he was greatly touched, and said, “ I hope you gave the
child the whole goose.” — P 2.

The pleasantest thing which Mr. Stirling has to tell with regard
to his connection with Dickens is concerning his dramatisation of

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

113

the Christmas Carol , which was done by the express sanction of the
author. The story is in itself so charming, and is so daintily told,
that Mr. Stirling’s own words must be used :

“ Dickens attended several rehearsals, furnishing valuable
suggestions. Thinking to make Tiny Tim (a pretty child) fcnore
effective, I ordered a set of irons and bandages for his supposed
weak leg. When Dickens siw this tried on the child, he took me
aside :

“‘No, Stirling, no; this won’t do! remember how painful it
would be to many of the aud'cnce having crippled children.’ ” — P 2.

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.

In January 1840, in The Almanack of the Month , “ W. H. W.” t hus
speaks of the first performance of a stage version of The Cricket on the
Hearth , at the -Lyceum :

44 That the Cricket might be served up quite warm to the play-
going public, on the foyer of the Lyceum Theatre, its author — Mr.
Charles Dickens — supplied the dramatist, Mr. Albert Smith, with
proof-sheets hot from the press. On the evening of the morning,
therefore, on which the book was published, its dramatic version
was produced ; and, as the adapter stuck very closely indeed to
the t 'xt of the original, of course it succeeded. Why, we are going
to explain.

“ Although Mr. Dickens does not profess dramatic authorship,
yet his writings have had a considerable influence on the stage. The
characters in his novels are — despite the exaggeration with which
a few of the critical fraternity charge him — completely natural ;
so essentially natural, indeed, that even after some of the stage
adapters and actors have done their worst upon *hem, they come
upon the stage very like transcripts from real life. As plays they
are altogether different from their predecessors. The dramatis
personae cannot, as that of the sentimental comedy and heavy
melodrama, be summarily and arbitrarily put into the various
conventional classes amongst which stage managers distribute the
4 parts.’ One cannot safely be given out at once to the 4 heavy
father ’ of the company ; another to the 4 smart servant ’ ; a third
to the 4 low’ comedian ’ ; a fourth to the 4 juvenile tragedian * ; a
fifth to the ‘chambermaid’; or a sixth to the 4 sentimental young
lady.’ Dickens’s characters arc too like nature for that. No
individual is, in real life, always being funny, or behaving wickedly,
or eternally breathing forth sentimentality. The same persons
have their times for being gay, and for being sad ; they have their
times for being brilliant, and their dull moments ; and so have the
life portraits which Dickens draw s. Some dramatists have attempted"
to set 4 Boa’s ’ compositions 4 to rights ’ for the stage, and to make
his characters stagily 4 effective ’ after their own tastes, and the
consequence has been that the plays done on that principle have been
os unnatural as a pantomime. In the present instance, the dramatist
has stuck to his text.” Mr. Keeley played Caleb Plummer. The
critic closes his remarks with expressions of unstinted admiration

114

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

for the Dot of Mrs. Keeley. Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, indeed, were
amongst the first, the greatest, and the best of the impersonators
of Dickens’s characters. — P 2.

My earliest recollection of tko Lyceum is under the management
of the Keeleys, when with their daughter, Miss Mary Keeley, Miss
Louisa Fair brother (Mrs. Fitzgeorge), Miss Wool gar, Messrs. Emery,
Wigan, Frank Matthews, Leigh Murray, Oxberry, and Collier.
Those were the days of the dramatisation of Dickens’s books :
Martin Chuzzlewit , with Keeley as Mrs. Gamp and his wife as Bailey,
F. Matthews a wonderful Pecksniff, Emery an excellent Jonas ;
The Cricket on the Hearth, with Mrs. Keeley as Dot, Keeley as Caleb
Plummer, Emery as Peerybingle, and Mary Keeley ’s debut as Bertha ;
of the sparkling burlesques concocted by Albert Smith and Tom
Taylor, while Charles Kenney would sit by and occasionally throw
in a joke or a suggestion. — Y.

RECOLLECTIONS OF “ O. A. S. 5 '

Of the pieces performed during 1830 and 1837 I especially re-
member the farce of The Strange Gentleman , an adaptation of one
of the Sketches by Boz , made by t lie writer of the Sketches himself.
The author of Pickwick also wrote the libretto for an oj>era called
The Village Coquettes , the composer of the music of which was Mr.
John Hullah.

I also remember another farcical burletta, entitled The Tradesmen's
Ball, and a remarkably lugubrious burlesque extravaganza, The
Revolt of the Workhouse . The New Poor Law was then in t hi' dawn
of its unpopularity ; and public attention was being drawn with
terrible force to the new Union Workhouse system in young Mr.
Charles Dickens’s novel of Oliver Twist , which was then appearing
in the pages of Bentley's Miscellany. Unless I gravely err, Oliver
was dramatised at the St. James's (of course, with the author’s
consent) almost as soon as it was concluded in Bentley ; and 1 have
a dim remembrance of reading in some comic periodical of the time
that so horrified was Dickens, who was present in a private box,
at the wretched hash made of his powerful fiction, that at the con-
clusion of the second act “ nothing but the soles of the boots of
4 Boz ’ were visible on the ledge of his box.”

Not without some fear and trembling do I tell this story ; since I
find in Forster’s Life of Dickens an explicit statement on the part of
the biographer that lie accompanied Dickens to a representation
of Oliver Twist at the Surrey Theatre, and that in the middle of the
first scene the author laid himself down upon the floor in a corner of
the box, and never rose from it till the curtain fell. It is just
possible that the outburst of feeling at the Surrey may have been a
replica of that at the St. James’s. But to return to The Remit of the
Workhouse. What the extravaganza was about I have not at
present any definite remembrance ; but I recollect that on the first
night there was represented a kind of trick or transformation scene,
simulating a field of turnips which were changed into the heads of

wju.iam k. ntniTox as cadtajn cuttle in

“ DOMBEY AND SON "

As performed. on the American stage

Ilf)

116

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

“ supers ” supposed to be paupers. These animated turnips rose
through a trap-door to the stage, and then advanced in a cadaverous
cohort to the footlights, crooning some doleful chant about the
scantiness of their rations. I have always firmly believed that this
transformation scene of the animated turnips gave Dickens, who was
constantly behind the scenes at tho St. James’s at the time, the idea
of Mr. Crummies’s celebrated “ set ” of the “ pump and tubs .” — S 2.

EDWIN DROOD.

I can quite understand Dickens’s objection to the pirate dramatist.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left a fragment, but I saw at the
Surrey Theatre a piece (in which I think Mr. Henry Neville played
the principal character) which finished the work for the author.
The secret of the death of the hero was the mystery left unsolved.
The dramatist of the version to which I refer laid his last act in the
crypt of Rochester Cathedral. He sent tho comic man into a lower
vault, and then brought Rosa Bud (the heroine) and Jasper (the
villain) together. The villain put his knife to Rosa’s throat. Then
emerg(xi the comic man from the vault below. ” Why ? ” asked
the viltain, annoyed at being interrupted in his murder of the
heroine, “ Why this intrusion ? ” — A.

Mr. Comyns Carr unfolded his idea of The Mystery of Edwin
Drood to a Cardiff audience on Thursday evening. The New Theatre
was highly honoured by becoming the scene of such a production.
Cardiff filled the theatre, and it was rewarded. In this drama,
which Mr. Tree presented so powerfully, the ideas of Dickens and the
ideas of his posthumous collaborator were subtly blended. The
play opened in the East End opium den, but not with the opening
scene of the book ; it was rather the sbene which Dickens placed
towards the close of his unfinished work. John Jasper entered, a
distinguished and incongruous figure amongst such vicious and
degraded surroundings. But with a familiarity to his environment
that startled one almost to nausea, he easily takes up the place which
an opium-sodden, evil-looking lascar has but just vacated. Ho
takes the pipe, and dreams — his dreams tell secrets: he talks of
Ned and Cloisterhain, and sends the old opium-selling hag to
Cloisterham to worm out more of them. The second scene shows
Jasper beset in mind by the intention of Drood's murder, learning
from Durdles’s garrulous chatter the means by which he shall do
his work and hide it. One also sees Rosa and Drood foreshadowing
together their coming separation, and Rosa’s shuddering disgust at
the thought and presence of Jasper.

The intense interest in the drama begins in the second act.
Jasper, Drood, and Neville Landless sup together on that wild
eventful Christmas Eve. All seems goodwill and good-fellowship
between them. Then Jasper, slipping aside, pours some powerful
powdered drug into his brew of mulled port, and ladles it out with
eager, nervous haste into the others’ glasses. A quarrel follows
between Drood and Landless — the quarrel oypr Rosa’s picture — and

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

117

presently the two, reconciled in their half-drugged state, go out to
watch the storm upon the river. Landless is seen no more that
night, but Jasper, brooding over the foul deed he means to do, is
startled by Drood’s return alone. While the lad sits in a drowsy
sleep he steels his nerves to strangle him. He loops his woollen
scarf all ready, but resolution fails him. Drood awakes and goes
to his bed. Jasper returns to the fire to brood again on his in-
tended crime. The opium-seller steals in, Jasper takes again the
drug, and in a delirious dream enacts by himself an imagined murder
of Drood. His cries awake the sleeping lad, and stealing down he
sees and hears enough. He stealthily goes out. Jasper awakes at
dawn with all the horror of his dream upon him, ho finds the watch
and chain — the metal that lime could not destroy — in the place
whore, Jiaving stolen them from Drood's sleeping body, he has put
them till the morning. Uncertain yet whether he dreams or no, he
hastens to the bedroom, finds that brood has not disturbed his bed,
and then, convinced of his crime, rushes down, pale and nerve-
shattered, to meet Mr. CYisparkle ,..id try to throw suspicion upon
Landless.

Suspicion upon Landless grows, and it is only Mr. Grewgious who
scents the true trail. He tells Jasper of the ring which Drood re-
turned to him on the night of his supposed murder, and he frightens
Jasper into believing that this ring must be amongst the dust in
the vault where Drood’s body, in ins dream, was cast into lime.
Surprising Jasper coming out of the vault, he holds up the ring, and
Jasper, taking it for the last evidence of his guilt, falls in a faint.
In the next scene he confesses the murder, and finally is found a
dying man in the county gaol. There, again, in delirium, he is
dreaming and shuddering at his crime. Mr. Crisparkle is comforting
his last moments, when as an apparition to him comes Drood in tho
flesh. Jasper, with enough return to consciousness to see Drood
and Rosa brought to each other again before him, dies, and tho
curtain falls with these two in forgiveness, mourning him.

Edwin Drood makes a play which is full of weird and strange
situations. For that, perhaps, it has so much fascination. Its
fascination holds one and keeps one until the fall of the curtain ;
it thrills one with the tenseness of its drama, and its rapid movement
from one soul -stirring scene to another keeps one’s eyes intent upon
the stage. It is so effective for its compactness, for tho amount of
emotion which is compressed in so many small spaces, and while its
development runs generally upon a rather morbid theme, it is a play
that will rank very high in modern dramatic history.

Mr. Tree is given a part which one may prophesy will be reckoned
amongst his finest. Tn it ho has to reproduce and reconcile in
one character two of the greatest passions — the lust of Hate and
murder, and the force of love— both expressed towards the same
person. Jasper hates and longs to murder Edwin Drood while yet
no loves him. In the first scene one gets a vivid picture of Jasper’s
mental attitude. One has compressed in two lines the idea which
Dickens sought gently and gradually to convey of the whole char-

118

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

acter. When Jasper, in his ravings, shouts, “ I would sweep the
whole world aside,” and “ even him, although I love him as my son,”
one sees the force which the other, stronger love has roused in a
weakened, imbalanced brain, and one perceives the keynote to the
whole tragedy. Mr. Tree has to make these counteracting forces
blend into a consistency, and that he succeeds is a sufficient tribute
to his art. Early in the play he shows us Jack and Ned as they
first were, friends and eoniidants ; then suddenly, with dramatic
gesture, with which Jasper breaks almost in repulsion from his
friend’s arm, he shows how the baser side of the uncle’s disposition
spasmodically asserts itself.

As the play proceeds he shows how his baser side gradually over-
powers the better, until in his great scene — the imaginary murder —
he shows Jasper entirely lost in desire for Brood’s death. In this
passage Mr. Tree has his best demanded of him. He pictures
together the opium maniac’s babbling terror of his own phantasy,
with the half-formed consciousness of his position, which helps him
to hide the traces of his intent ioned crime. His was a most vivid
piece of acting; its circumstances could not help reminding one of
Sir Henry Irving’s climactic moments in The Belli, and the two
will rank together as masterpieces in tragedy.

Mr. Basil Gill gave a charming representation of the romantic
title-role; and Miss Iris Hoey gave a perfectly truthful performance
as the timid and gentle little heroine Rosa Bud. Especially was
Mr. G, W. Anson noteworthy for his well-considered and consistent
study of Hurdles. He has created a part in this which will stand
amongst the best of Dickens’s humorous stage characters, while
Mr. Haviland’s Mr. Grewgious was scarcely less effectual.— Western
Mail , Cardiff, Friday, November 22, 1907.

Mr. Comyns Carr’s play was produced in London, at His Majesty’s,
on 4th January 1908, with Constance Collier, Adrienne Augarde,
Cicely Richards, William Haviland, and Mr. [now Sir] Herbert
Becrbohm Tree in the cast.

AMERICAN DRAMATISATIONS.

No account of Dickens’s part in the history of the drama is
complete without reference to Brougham and Burton’s memorable
work on the acted versions of Dickens’s stories, or to such realisal ions
as Madame Janauschek’s Lady Dedloek, Joseph Jefferson’s Caleb
Plummer and Newman Noggs, Placide’s Bumble, Burton’s
Micawbcr, or Wallack’s Fagin.

The appetite of managers and audiences was keen for Dickens
when Copperfidd appeared. I have not been able to determine
which house first announced a stage version, so nearly simultaneous
were the productions. But certain it is that Dr. Northall’s version
came first into the field on 30th December I8J0, at Burton’s Theatre.
Seven days after, on the same evening, 0th January, two other
Copper fields were presented; one at the Bowery Theatre and
another at Brougham’s, which was the work of Brougham himself,
and the celebrated manager-dramatist-actor played Micawber.

120 DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

The delay in Pickwick's appearance on the American stage is
accounted for merely by the delay in the ocean voyage of the com-
pleted Papa's. The company at the Franklin Theatre, New York,
presented the “ comic play” for the first time on 24th July 1837.
A more notable presentation was made the next spring by the
excellent company at the Park Theatre, where it was after revived.

Oliver Twist is instinct with melodrama, and it has ever been the
most satisfactory material for the dramatists and the actors. No
less celebrated a woman than Charlotte Cushman found Nancy
Sikes a stepping-stone to appreciation, and Francis Courtney
Wemyss, in liis Theatrical Biography , declares that “ in all her
future career she never surpassed the excellence of that performance.”

The great story of nether London appeared in Bentley s Miscellany
early in 1838, and before the close of the year several theatres were
receiving the crowds who came to see Charley Bates and the Artful
Dodger, Bill and Nancy, Fagin and Bumble.

With one exception Oliver Twist has probably been given in
America more often than any other Dickens play. The first Ameri-
can presentation of Oliver Twist , on 7th January 183b at the Franklin
Theatre, was the occasion of Charles Mestayer’s debut. Of vastly
greater interest and received with larger success was the second
production, given one month later at the Park Theatre, under the
title Oliver Twist , or the Parish Boy's Progress. This was the
occasion of Miss Cushman's first appearance as Nancy Sikes. At
Burton’s a revival was seen in December of 1851, when Burton gave
his memorable Bumble, and another presentation it would have
been good to have seen was the version made by Joseph Jefferson
himself, and presented 2nd February 18b0, at tbe Winter Garden
with the following familiar cast: Brownlow, J. H. Stoddard;
Bumble, George Holland (father of our E. M., Joseph, and George
Holland); Bill Sikes, G. Jordan; Fagin, James Wallack, jun. ; and
Nancy Sikes, Matilde Heron. Fanny Davenport and Klita Proctor
Otis have both been praised for their Nancy, and occasional revivals
of Oliver are successfully given nowadays by the stock companies.

There was palpably a scramble to be first to get Nicklcby on the
stage in New York. It was given on 25th January 1839, at the
National, and five days later, 30th January, at the Park, where
Charlotte Cushman appeared as Fanny Sfjuccrs. A performance
at Burton’s in January 1853, made one of the notable chain of
Dickens plays for which this house was noted. At the Winter
Garden throughout November 1853, Boucicault’s version was
presented, with Dion Boucicault himself as Mantalini, Joseph
Jefferson as Newman Noggs, Agnes Robertson as Smikc, and George
Holland as the Specimen Boy. It was at one time a popular bill
with A. M. Palmer’s great company at the Union Square. At all
times the centre of dramatic interest has been Smike. So pro-
nounced has this been that the adaptations most used have generally
been called Smike , or, in some instances, The Fortunes of Smike .

The mention of The Old Curiosity Shop in connection with the
drama at once suggests Lotta, whose Little Nell and Marchioness

122

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

are twin memories in Dickensian triumphs with Irving’s Jingle,
Florence’s Cuttle, Cushman’s Nancy, and Jefferson’s Caleb. There
have been but few other presentations, none notable, of this novel in
America. The last is of recent memory, when at the Herald Square
only two years ago Mary Saunders essayed what it is impossible
to think of except as 44 Lotta’s old parts.”

“ To Dombey and Son says Hutton in his Plays and Players ,
“ Burton owed much of his success as manager and actor ; Brougham
' his first success as w T riter or adapter of plays, and Mrs. Hoey her
great success as artist and public favourite ; and, above all, we, the
public, are indebted to Dombey and Son for Mrs. Hoey, for Burton,
for Brougham, and for the lesser stars it developed and presented to
us. Let us, therefore, thank our 4 stars ’ for Dombey and Son ,
and Dombey and Son for our 4 stars.’ ”

The play seems always to have been more popular in America
than in England. It is not associated with any of the great names
of the London stage, whereas here, in addition to those referred to
by Hutton, the late W. J. Florence found in Cuttle an imperishable
bond to the hearts of his audiences, and a reason for permanent fame
unsustained even by any of his other celebrated creations. When
he visited England Punch assented that Phiz-ically Florence was
Cuttle down to the ground, and his success was otherwise un-
qualified. Dickens himself declared that the American comedian
had thoroughly realised his conception of the character. When
Dickens saw Florence as Cuttle, the play was being acted in Man-
chester, and Henry Irving gave, no doubt, admirable support in the
role of Mr. Dombey. In England this adaptation is sometimes
billed as Heart's Delight.

Reference has already been made to the vogue which attended
the American stage-birth of David Copper field. It was almost a
duplicate of the quartette of simultaneous productions of Martin
Chuzzlewit. It seems, however, to have been a Hash in the pan.
Some English praise survives for Samuel Emery as Dan'l Peggotty,
and Micawber has proved a blessed opportunity to several of our
comedians, from Burton to Stuart Robson; but, though in point of
popularity it stands among the first of the novels, it is among the
least of the plays. Bleak House and Little Dorrit followed in
succession, but left no permanent impression beyond Jennie Lee’s
perennial Jo, in England, and, in America, the opportunity which
Janauschek found to wrest a memorable triumph from Daily Ded-
Jock and Hortense. A somewhat fluffy statesman said, after seeing
Bleak House in Washington : “ Janauschek as Lady Dedlock was
most artistic, nevertheless the woman who acted Hortense was
really greater.”

Toby Veck in The Chimes found a remarkable exponent in this
country in Charles Burke, an admired comedian.

The first Christmas next after its publication A Christmas Cared ,
Stirling’s version, was the festival bill at the Park, New York, and
succeeding Yuletides saw various repetitions.

There remains only to tell of the stage career of the fifth of the

DICKENS AND THE STAGE. 123

Christmas stories, The Cricket on the Hearth , which is the one
Dickens adaptation preserved for our present enjoyment. Origin-
ally it was presented “ in three chirps,” at the City of London
Theatre, 7th January 1846, just a fortnight after its appearance in
book form. Albert Smitli was the author of the version seen the
twenty-lirst of the month following at the Park Theatre. He
included a character of which I have not been able to find any other
trace, the Spirit of the Cricket. The early versions were, however,
decidedly crude, and were characterised, as were all the first adapta-
tions of Dickens, by the haste with which they were rushed before
the public after the appearance of the respective stories. Dion
Boucicault made a new version, the one concurrently presented,
and it was acted for the lirst time 14th September 1859, under tho
title Dot. After that night it was always Caleb and not Dot whom
the public came to see. Joseph Jefferson was the toy-maker of that
memorable evening, and this creation lias survived as one of the
principal supports of his fame. — Paul_Wilstach, in The Bookman
(New York), September 1901/

j. r. planch# 'and the fairies.

In 1855 I had the pleasure of receiving the following kind note
from Charles Dickens :

“ Tavistock House,

“ Sunday , Seventh January , 1855.

“ Dear Planch#, — My children have a little story-book play
under paternal direction once a year on a birthday occasion. They
are going to do Fortunio to-morrow night, with which I have taken
some liberties for their purpose. If you should happen to be dis-
engaged, we should be delighted to see you, and you would meet
some old stagers whom you kno\v very well. We all know you to
be on such familiar terms with the fairies that tho smallest actor in
tho company is not afraid of you. .1 am obliged to appoint a quarter
past 8 (1 mean that for an eight) as t lie latest hour of arrival, because
the theatre is almost as inconveniently constructed as an English
real one, and nobody can by any human means be got into it after
the play is begun. — Very faithfully yours,

Charles Dickens.

“ J. R. Plane he. Esq.”

I w r as fortunately not engaged, and enjoyed the evening exceed-
ingly. Tho little actors did credit to the ” paternal direction”;
and Dickens's histrionic ability is almost as generally well known
as his admirable contributions to English literature. Ho was as
fond of fairy lore as I w as, and it was a great bond of union between
us. He was extremely delighted on hearing one day, when we
dined together at tho house of a mutual friend, that I was about to
publish a complete collection of the Countess d’Aulnoy’s stories, and
on my sending him an early copy, w ith a portrait of the Countess for
frontispiece, acknowledged its receipt in a note. — P 3.

124

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

VIEWS ON CONTEMPORARY ACTORS.

Dickens took great interest in theatrical affairs, and was very
fond of theatrical society. He had a lifelong affection for Mac ready,
and a great regard for Regnier and Fechter ; of the latter he said
once to me, “ He has the brain of a man, combined with that strange
power of arriving, without knowing how or why, at the truth, which
one usually finds only in a woman.” ITe had also a liking for
Phelps, Buckstone, Webster, Madame Celeste, and the Keeleys.
He saw most of the pieces which were produced from time to time,
but he delighted in the ir-regular drama, the shows and booths and
circuses. — Y.

Mr. James T. Fields, the American publisher and intimate friend
of Dickens, says :

“ He was passionately fund of the theatre, loved the lights and
music and flowers, and the happy faces of the audience. He was
accustomed to say that his love of the theatre never failed, and, no
matter how dull the play, he was always careful while he sat in the
box to make no sound which could hurt the feelings of the actors,
or show any lack of attention. His genuine enthusiasm for Mr.
Fech tor’s acting was most interesting. He loved to describe seeing
him first, quite by accident, in Paris, having strolled into a little
theatre there one night. 4 He was making love to a woman,’ Dickens
said, 4 and he so elevated her as well as himself by the sentiment in
which he enveloped her, that they trod in a purer ether, and in
another sphere, quite lifted out of the present. By Heavens I I
said to myself, a man who can do this can do anything. 1 never
saw two people more purely and instantly elevated by the power of
love. The manner also,’ he continued, ‘ in which he presses the
hem of the dress of Lucy, in The Bride of Lamm er moor , is something
wonderful. The man has genius in him which is unmistakable.’

P 2.

In the latter days of Macready’s life, when the weight of time and
of sorrow pressed him down, Dickens was his most frequent visitor:
he cheered him with narratives of bygone days ; lie poured some
of his own abundant warmth into his heart ; he led him into his
own channels of thought ; he gave readings to rouso his interest;
he waked up in him again, by his vivid descriptions, his sense of
humour — he conjured back his smile and his laugh. — Macready as
I knew Him , by Lady Pollock.

On 29th April 1863, Carlyle wrote: “ I had to go yesterday to
Dickens’s reading, 8 p.m., Hanover Rooms, to the complete up-
setting of my evening habitudes and spiritual composure. Dickens
does do it capitally, such as it is ; acts better than any Macready
in the world ; a whole tragic, comic, heroic theatre visible perform-
ing under one hat and keeping us laughing — in a sorry way, some
of us thought — the whole night. He is a good creature, too, and
makes fifty or sixty pounds by each of these readings.” — Thomas
Carlyle , by J. A. Froudo.

DICKENS AND THE STAGE.

125

A FRIEND OF THE ACTOR.

On I4th February 1866, Dickens, speaking as Chairman at the
annual dinner of the Dramatic, Equestrian, and Musical Fund,
paid the following tribute to actors as a class :

“ There is no class of society the members of which so well help
themselves, or so well help each other. Not in the whole grand
chapters of Westminster Abbey and York Minster, not in the whole
quadrangle of the Royal Exchange, not in the whole list of members
of the Stock Exchange, not in the Inns of Court, not in the College
of Surgeons, can there possibly be found more remarkable instances
of uncomplaining poverty, of cheerful, constant self-denial, of the
generous remembrance of the claims of kindred and professional
brotherhood, than will certainly be found in the dingiest and dirtiest
concert-room, in the least lucid theatre — even in the raggedest tent-
circus that was ever stained by weather. I have been twitted in
print before now with rather flattering actors when I address
them as one of their trustees at their General Fund dinner. Believe
me, I flatter nobody, unless it be s< -Retimes myself ; but, in such a
company as the present, I always feel it my manful duty to bear
my testimony to this fact — first, because it is opposed to a stupid,
unfeeling libel ; secondly, because my doing so may afford some
slight encouragement to the persons who are unjustly depreciated ;
and lastly, and most of all, because I know* it is the truth .*’ — S L

ON HIS TRAVELS

The following extract from a speech of Dickens on 30th December
1854, at the Anniversary Dinner of the Commercial Travellers’
Schools, gives a vivid idea of the contrast between the methods
of travel in his day and our own :

I think it may be assumed that most of us here present
know something about travelling. I do not mean in distant
regions or foreign countries, although 1 dare say some of us
have had experience in that way, but at home, and within
the limits of the United Kingdom. 1 dare say most of us
have had experience of the extinct ‘ fast coaches,’ the Wonders,
Taglionis, and Tallyhos, of other days, I dare say most of us
remember certain modest postchaises, dragging us down interminable
roads, through slush and mud, to little country towns with no
visible population, except half a dozen men in smock-frocks, half
a dozen women with umbrellas and pattens, and a washed-out
dog or so shivering under the gables, to complete the desolate
picture. We can all discourse, 1 dare say, if so minded, about
our recollections of The Talbot, The Queen's Head, or The Lion of
those days. We have all been to the room on the ground door on
one side of the old inn-yard, not quite free from a certain fragrant
smell of tobacco, where the cruets on the sideboard were usually
absorbed by the skirts of the box-coats that hung from the wail ;
where awkward servants waylaid us at every turn, like so many
human man-traps ; where county members, framed and glazed, were
eternally presenting that petition which, somehow or other, had
made their glory in the country, although nothing else had ever
come of it; where the books in the windows always wanted the
first, last, and middle leaves, and where the one man was always
arriving at some unusual hour in the night, and requiring his break-
fast at a similarly singular period of the day. I have no doubt we
could all be very eloquent on the comforts of our favourite hotel,
wherever it was — its beds, its stables, its vast amount of posting, its
excellent cheese, its head waiter, its capital dishes, its pigeon-pies,
or its 1820 port. Or possibly we could recall our chaste and innocent
admiration of its landlady, or our fraternal regard for its handsome
chambermaid. A celebrated domestic critic once writing of a
famous actress, renowned for her virtue and beauty, gave her the

ON HIS TRAVELS. 127

character of being an ‘eminently gatherable-to-one’s-arms sort
of person.’ Perhaps someone amongst us has borne a somewhat
similar tribute to the mental charms of the fair deities who presided
at our hotels.

“ With the travelling characteristics of later times, we are all,
no doubt, equally familiar. We know all about that statiop to
which we must take our tickets, although we never get there ;
and the other one at which we arrive after dark, certain to find
it half a mile from the town, where the old road is sure to have
been abolished, and the new road is going to be made — w r hcre the
old neighbourhood has been tumbled down, and the new one is
not half built up. We know all about that party on the platform
who, with the best intentions, can do nothing for our luggage
except pitch it into all sorts of unattainable places. We know
all about that short omnibus, in which one is to be doubled up, to
the imminent danger of the crown of one’s hat ; and about that
fly, whose leading peculiarity is never to be there when it is wanted.
We know, too, how instantaneouslv the lights of the station dis-
appear when the train starts, and about that grope to the new
Railway Hotel, which will be an excellent house when the customers
come, but which at present has nothing to offer but a liberal allow-
ance of damp mortar and new lime.” — S 1.

Addressing an audience interested (like himself) in the welfare
of the Commercial Travellers’ Schools, in January 18C0, Dickens
assumed for the nonce “the character and title of a Traveller
Uncommercial.” “ I am both a town traveller and a country
traveller,” he said, “ and am always on the road. Figuratively
speaking, I travel from the great house of Human -interest Brothers,
and have rather a large connection in the fancy-goods way. Liter-
ally speaking I am always wandering here and there from my
rooms in Covent Garden, London : now about the city streets, now
about the country by-roads, seeing many little things, and some
great things, which, because they interest' me, I think may interest
others .” — K 1.

“ IN HIS BEST FRENCH.”

On landing at Boulogne, July 1844, he went to the bank for
.money, delivering in his best French a rather long address to the
clerk behind the counter, and was much disconcerted by that
official inquiring in the “ native-born Lombard Street manner —
How would you like to take it, sir ? ’ K 1.

The across -the -Channel suburb of Folkestone was very popular
with the Bouverie Street Brotherhood. Dickens loved Boulogne,
and was much honoured by the inhabitants.

“ Tj^°k ^ 10 wa y the .y treat him ! ” exclaimed an envious writer :

j e ^ me t on the quay by the Mayor, and conducted to a banquet.

‘mS »?° *° P 011 * 0 # 110 they don’t let off fireworks in my honour ! ”
No, replied my father, “ for, when you go to Boulogne, you
take good care that no one should learn your address I ”

128

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

{Boulogne in those days was the sanctuary for those avoiding
imprisonment for debt.) — A.

I N A “ PINK JAIL.”

The 16th of July 1844 found him in the Villa di Bagnarello at
Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, which had been taken for him by his
whimsical friend Angus Fletcher, who then lived near at hand.
The novelist described tho villa as an unpicturesque and uninteresting
dwelling, resembling a “ Fink Jail ” — “ the most perfectly lonely,
rusty, stagnant old staggerer of a domain that you can possibly
imagine . . . the stable is so full of * vermin and swarmers ’ that
I always expect to see the carriage going out bodily, with legions
of industrious fleas harnessed to and drawing it oh, on their own
account .” — K 1.

TRAVELLING LETTERS.

We all started oh one morning from Paris on our way south in
that wonderful travelling carriage which is so graphically described
in the Pictures from Italy; and I can remember many* walks with
my father up apparently interminable hills in the lonely French
country districts, many queer dirty little towns, the shabby sights
of which had to be explored as if they were really quite well worth
seeing, many cheery meals and snacks produced as by the con-
jurer's art from the innumerable pockets of the carriage, many
wild roadside inns where in some mysterious way peculiar to himself
my father, aided and abetted by the excellent courier who was in
charge of the caravan, evolved order out of chaos, comfort out of
squalor, and cheery, kindly attention out of the original sulky
apathy. Of my father at Albaro and afterwards at Genoa in 1844
and 1845 I have, strange to say, but a dim recollection, though I
have many vivid reminiscences of the vineyards of tho “ Pink
Jail,” as he called the house at Albaro, and of tho fine terraced
gardens of tho Palazzo Peschiere in the beautiful city itself.—
Charles Dickens, the younger, in North A merican Review , May 1895.

ENGLISn k LA WELLER.

The visit to Italy often formed a subject for conversation with
Dickens, and only a few r weeks before his death he told Mr. Arthur
Locker this anecdote of his experiences there.

“ Mr. Dickens, on one occasion, visited a certain monastery, and
was conducted over the building by a young monk, who, though
a native of tho country, spoke remarkably fluent English. There
was, however, one peculiarity about his pronunciation. He
frequently misplaced his v T s and w’s. ‘ Have you been in England ? 9
asked Mr. Dickens. ‘No,* replied the monk, ‘I have learnt my
English from this book/ producing Pickwick ; and it further ap-
peared that he had selected Mr. Samuel Weller as the beau iddal
of elegant pronunciation.” — II 4.

ON HIS TRAVELS.

129

A VISIT TO VICTOR HUGO.

From Paris, early in 1847, our author writes to Lady Blessington,
describing his visit to Victor Hugo, then residing in the French
capital. Twelve months after this, the great French novelist
had to fly. The coup d'etat brought about a new order of things :

“ We were [writes Dickens] at V. H.’s house last Sunday week —
a most extraordinary place, something like an old curiosity shop,
or the property-room of some gloomy, vast old theatre. I was
much struck by H. himself, who looks like a genius — ho is, every
inch of him, and is very interesting and satisfactory from head to
foot. His wife is a handsome woman, with flashing black eyes.
There is also a charming ditto daughter, of fifteen or sixteen, with
ditto eyes. Sitting among old armour and old tapestry, and old
coffers, and grim old chairs and tables, and old canopies of state
from old palaces, and old golden lions going to play at skittles with
ponderous old golden balls, that made a most romantic show,” and
looked like a chapter out of one of his own books . — II 4.

The text of this letter as sold at Sotheby’s, and given in the
newspapers.a little while ago, differs somewhat from the foregoing*
particularly in the references to Mine, and Mile. Hugo.

BE AUCOURT-MUTIJE L.

After his last visit to Boulogne, Beaucourt-Mutuel fades out,
and we see no more of him, as we would have liked to have done.
“ Boz” parted from him in 1856, and died, as we know, in 1870;
but his host survived him eleven years, and was buried at Condette,
a pleasant village south of Boulogne, and many miles away from
his “ property,” at the north of the town. He lies beside the church,
which boasts a modest Gothic steeple. His tomb is a stone with
a huge plain stone cross reared upon it, and with this inscription :

“ Ici repose le corps do Monsieur Ferdinand Beaucourt, 6poux
de Fran^oise Mutucl, ne a Bethunc, decede a Condette, le 8 mai,
1881, & l’age de 75 ana et 8 mois.”

On the other side of the stone is a most touching tribute paid to
Dickens, and one, too, that would havo gladdened his heart. The
widow, in her natural pride at the colebrity which the grand
romancier had given her husband, had caused to be “ cut ” on the
stone a passage from Oar French Watering-Place : “The Landlord
of whom Charles Dickens wrote, 4 1 never did sec such a gentle,
kind heart. 1 ” — F 2. (M. Beaucourt-Mutuel was the “ M. Loyal ” of

the sketch, Our French Watering-Place.)

TRAGIC HOLIDAY INCIDENT.

In February 1849 Dickons spent a holiday at Brighton, accom-
panied by his wife and sister-in-law and two daughters, and they
wet© joined bv the gonial artist John Leech and his wife. They had
not been in their lodgings a week when both his landlord and his
landlord’s daughter went raving mad, this untoward circumstance
compelling the lodgers to seek quarters elsewhere — at the Bedford

130

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Hotel. “ If/* wrote Dickens, when relating the adventure to
Forster, “ you could have heard the cursing and crying of the two ;
could have seen the physician and nurse quoited out into the passage
by the madman at the hazard of their lives ; could have seen Leech
and me flying to the doctor’s rescue ; could have seen our wives
pulling us back ; could have seen the M.D. faint with fear ; could
have seen three other M.D.s come to his aid ; with an atmosphere
of Mrs. Gamps, strait- waistcoats, struggling friends and servants,
surrounding the whole, you would have said it was quite worthy of
me, and quite in keeping with my usual proceedings .” — K 3.

IilS FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA.

On his first visit to America in 1S42, the novelist, referring to
the lack of accommodation on board the Britannia , thus wrote to
Thomas Mitton :

“ Anything so utterly and monstrously absurd as the size of our
cabin, * no gentleman of England who lives at home at ease ’ can
for a moment imagine. Neither of the portmanteaus would go
into it. There ! . . . The ladies’ cabin is so close to purs that I
could knock the door open without getting off something they call
my bed, but which 1 believe to be a muflin beaten flat.”

Charles Dickens made his first visit to the United States in the
opening month of 1842. Washington Irving headed the list of
distinguished authors who wrote to urge his coming. Assured of
a hearty welcome, Dickens sailed with his wife from Liverpool on
4th January 184*2, landing at Boston eighteen days later. His
reception in that city was enough to turn the head of an older man.
Mrs. Dickens, writing home a few days after their arrival, spoke of
it as “ something not to be described,” and added : 44 It will be the
same, they tell us, all through America.” And it was. In New
York, whence he journeyed from Boston, the ex-chancellor of the
State, the judge of the courts, eminent lawyers and leading men of
science and of letters, along with prominent representatives of the
pulpit and the medical profession, all joined hands to welcome
Dickens. There were parties and receptions in his honour ; there was
a dinner, presided over by Irving and attended by Bryant, Halleek,
and many another ; and there was the famous 44 Boz Ball ” at the
Park Theatre on 14th February 1842. 44 Kate and I,” said Dickens
in a letter to John Forster, 44 were twice marched around before tho
ball began, escorted by Golden in evening dress, and Morris ” — tho
partner of Willis — 44 in a uniform of heaven knows what regiment of
militia, while we were surrounded by three thousand people in full
dress packed from roof to floor, with the house magnificently
decorated, and amid lights, glitter, glare, show, noise, and cheering.*’

For months thereafter Knickerbockers talked of little else than
the Dickens Ball. Meanwhile, Dickens, travelling through tho
South and West, met everywhere with cordial and affectionate
welcome. Yet at the end of a few months he returned to England
a disappointed and embittered man. He had sought to secure the

ON HIS TRAVELS.

131

passage by Congress of a copyright law that would assure adequate
protection to the interests of foreign authors, counting confidently
upon his own great popularity to carry the matter through. He
counted without his host. Failure gave him acquaintance with a
phase of Yankee character not at all to his liking, and led to the
publishing, in 1843, of his American Notes . These purported to be
accurate sketches of life in the United States, but they w ere nothing
of the kind. Instead, they were a series of sneers at American
ways, manners and people. The bad taste that led to the printing
of such a book, after the generous treatment which Dickens had
received in the States, no one can dispute. It is only fair to add
that its publication was subsequently much regretted by the author.
— Rufus Rockwell Wilson, in The Bookman (New York), vol. xiii.

Professor Felton, alluding to the death of Washington Irving in
a speech, in the latter part of the year 1859, gave this interest-
ing reminiscence of the friendship existing between Dickens and
Irving :

“ The time when I saw the most Oj. Mr. Irving was in the winter
of 1842, during the visit of Mr. Charles Dickens in New York. I
passed much of the time with Mr. Irving and Mr. Dickens, and it
was delightful to witness the cordial intercourse of the young man,
in the flush and glory of his youthful genius, and his elder compeer,
then in the assured possession of immortal renowm. Dickens said,
in his frank hearty manner, that, from his childhood, he had known
the works of Irving ; and that, before he thought of coming to this
country, he had received a letter from him, expres sing the delight
he felt in reading the story of k Little Nell ’ ; and from that day they
had shaken hands, autographically , across the Atlantic

“ Great and varied as was the genius of Mr. Irving, there was one
thing he shrank with a comical terror from attempting, and that
was a dinner speech. A great dinner, however, was to be given to
Mr. Dickens in New York, as one had already been given in Boston,
and it was evident to all that no man like Washington Irving could
be thought of to preside. With all his dread of making a speech,
he was obliged to obey the universal call, and to accept the painful
pre-eminence. I saw him daily during the interval of preparation,
either at the lodgings of Dickens, or at dinner, or at evening parties.
1 hoped I show r eil no want of sympathy with his forebodings, but I
could not help being amused with his tragi-comical distress which
the thought of that approaching dinner had caused him. ... At
length the long-expected evening arrived. A company of the most
eminent persons, from ail the professions and every w r alk of life,
were assembled, and Mr. Irving took the chair. I had gladly
accepted an invitation, making it, however, a condition that I
should not be called upon to speak — a thing I then dreaded quite
as much as Mr. Irving himself. ... I had the honour to be placed
next but one to Mr. Irving, and the great pleasure of sharing in his
conversation. ‘ I shall certainly break down,’ ho repeated over and
over again. At last the moment arrived. Mr. Irving arose, and
was received with deafening and long-continued applause, which by

132

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

no means lessened his apprehension. He began in his pleasant
voice ; got through two or three sentences pretty easily, but in the
next hesitated ; and, after one or two attempts to go on, gave it
up, with a graceful allusion to the tournament, and the troop of
knights all armed and eager for the fray ; and ended with the toast,
1 Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation.’ 4 There ! ’ said he, as
he resumed his seat under a repetition of the applause which had
saluted his rising, — ‘ there ! I told you I should break down, and
I’ve done it.’

44 There certainly never was a shorter after-dinner speech ; and
I doubt if there ever was a more successful one. The manuscript
seemed to be a dozen pages long, but the printed speech was not
as many lines.

“ Mr. Irving often spoke with good-humoured envy of the felicity
with which Dickens always acquitted himself on such occasions.” —
U 4.

WELL WORTH THE FLOGGING.

In 1842 news came that Charles Dickens had arrived in America,
and presently it was announced that on a certain day he was to pass
through Fredericksburg on his way to Richmond. Ho was to come
by steamboat from Washington to A quia landing, thence by stage
to Fredericksburg, alighting only for lunch at Farmer’s Hotel.
The prospect of setting eyes on the greatest man in the world filled
me with such emotion that my parents agreed that I might in their
name ask Mr. Hanson for the necessary permission to leave school
a little before the midday recess. The usage when we wished to
leave the schoolroom temporarily was to stand silently before the
master. This I did, but he happened to bo irritated by someone
in the class he was hearing, and motioned me oil. On my en-
deavouring to say I had permission of my parents ho ordered me
to my seat. Thither I returned, jumped out of an open window,
seven or eight feet from the ground, and reached the inn just as the
author was alighting. On my return to school just after recess,
there was a dead silence ; my leap had been observed by many, and
none knew the reason for it. Mr. Hanson stood pale and agitated,
for I had been hitherto obedient. My brother Peyton was absent,
and I was too much dazed by the situation to arrest by any plea the
impending switch. It was the only Hogging I ever received in
school, and feeling that it was unmerited I bore it without a word
or a tear. But tout com prendre, e'est tout pardonner. The dear old
master when he le arned the whole story was more troubled than I
was, for I had got a good look at Dickens. — 0 3.

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS.

Almost twenty-five years after his first visit Dickens came a
second time to America. In 1807 he determined to give a series of
readings from his works in the United States in order, as we know
now, to recuperate an exchequer that had been too heavily drawn

ON HIS TRAVELS.

133

upon. At first he feared that old grudges might be remembered
against him, but he was happily mistaken. David Copperfield ,
Bleak House> and Our Mutual Friend had caused American Notes
to be forgiven if not forgotten, and the welcome given their author
was as sincere and hearty as that accorded him in his youth. His
readings, from the first given in Boston in November 1867, to the
last one in New York, five months later, were an unparalleled
success. Wherever he went great audiences crowded to greet him,
and the seventy-six readings which he gave in various cities of the
country yielded him a net profit of upwards of $180,000.

Not less cordial were the personal welcomes extended to the-
great novelist — welcomes which reached a fitting climax in the well-
remembered Press dinner given to him at Delmonico’s on the night
of 18th April 1868 This dinner, arranged by a committee of the
New York Press, represented authorship and journalism from
Maine to Texas, and over the great West to California. It was a
noble gathering — two hundred guests from all parts of the Union,
and all men of authority and renown. Horace Greeley, then in the
prime of health and genius, presided, with Dickens on his right and
Henry J. Raymond on his left, and opened the speaking in an address
of persuasive eloquence and humour. His commencement was unique,
for he began by telling how more than thirty years before he had
established a weekly paper called the New Yorker. “ In looking
about/’ said he, “ for matter to fill my literary department I ran
against some sketches from a cheap English periodical, which I at
once transferred to my paper. These sketches were by an unknown
author, who wrote under the appellation of ‘ Boz.’ So I think I can
claim to be the first one who introduced Mr. Dickem to this country.”
Then he went on in his crisp, quaint, original way to tell how he
had tried in a Florentine inn to read David Copperfield in Italian,
ending with a toast which made every glass ring : “ Health and
happiness, honour, and generous, because just, recompense to our
friend and guest, Charles Dickens.”

When the applause had died away, Dickens arose to reply. Many
of his readings had been given when the reader was tortured by the
maladies which beset his closing years, and he had come from a sick-
bed to attend the dinner given in his honour. Yet wo are told he
spoke with an ease marvellous to. those who knew his suffering.
He spoke from memory, for his speech had been prepared with care,
amid the closest attention and at times enraptured applause. There
was a figure at the end — it were better for America and England to
go back to the ice age, and be given over to the Arctic fox and bear
than fight — that brought every guest to his feet ; and as he dat
down in a burst of cheers the band played “ God Save the Queen.”

Four days later Dickens sailed for home, “Come to England
when the hedges are in bloom and report at Gad’s Hill,” werb his
parting words to a friend at the steamer’s side. In June 1870 this
friend came to England, and found the hedges in bloom, but — no
master at Gad’s Hill. Dickens had died three days before, and the
American who had planned to be his guest was only in time to see

134

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

the flowers still fresh on the slab over his grave in Westminster
Abbey. — Rufus Rockwell Wilson, in The Bookman (New York),
vol. xiii.

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS.

Here is the text of the concluding part of Dickens’s speech at
Delmonico’s :

u What I have intended, what I have resolved upon (and this is
the confidence I seek to place in you) is, on my return to England, in
my own person, to bear, for the behoof of my countrymen, such
testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I have hinted at
to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have been, in the smallest
places equally with the largest, I have been received with unsurpass-
able politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration,
and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon
me by the nature of my avocation here, and the state of my health.
This testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants
have any legal right in my books, I shall cause to l>£ republished,
as an appendix to every copy of those two books of mine in which I
have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be done,
not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act
of plain justice and honour.

4i If I kno^v anything of my countrymen — and they give me credit
for knowing something — if I know anything of my countrymen,
gentlemen, the English heart is stirred by the fluttering of those
Stars and Stripes, as it is stirred by no other flag that flies except its
own. If 1 know my countrymen, in any and every relation towards
America, they begin, not as Sir Anthony Absolute recommended
that lovers should begin, with k a little aversion,’ but with a great
liking and a profound respect ; and whatever the little sensitiveness
of the moment, or the little official passion, or the little official
policy now, or then, or here, or there, may be, take my word for it,
that the first enduring, great, popular consideration in England is a
generous construction of justice.

“ Finally, gentlemen, and I say this subject to your correction,
I do believe that from the great majority of honest minds on both
sides, there cannot be absent the conviction that it would t>e better
for this globe to be riven by an earthquake, fired by a comet, over-
run by an iceberg, and abandoned to the Arctic fox and bear, than
that it should present the spectacle of these two great nations, each
of which has, in its own way and hour, striven so hard and so success-
fully for freedom, ever again being arrayed the one against the
other .” — S 1.

COOLNESS IN PERIL.

While Dickens was staying at an hotel in New York, December
1867, there was a fire. It was with difficulty located, and the
novelist had to be awakened for fear of the fire spreading. His
presence of mind served to calm the guests. — Dolby gives a very
long account, without much incident, on pages 191 to 195.

136

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

ADVENTURE IN A SNOWSTORM.

Once while in this country [America] on a bitter, freezing after-
noon — night coming down in a drifting snowstorm — he was returning
with me from a long walk in the country. The wind and baffling
sleet were so furious that the street in which we happened to be
fighting our way ’was quite deserted ; it w r as almost impossible to
see across it, the air w r as so thick with the tempest : all conversation
between us had ceased, for it was only possible for us to breast the
storm by devoting our wffiole energies to keeping on our feet ; we
seemed to be walking in a different atmosphere from any we had ever
before encountered. All at once I missed Dickens from my side.
What had become of him ? Had he gone down in the drift, utterly
exhausted, and was the snow burying him out, of sight? Very
soon the sound of his cheery voice was heard on the other side of the
way. With great difficulty, over the piled-up snow, I struggled
across the street, and there found him lifting up, almost by main
force, a blind old man who had got bewildered by the storm, and
had fallen down unnoticed, quite unable to proceed. Dickens, a
long distance away from him, with that tender, sensitive, and
penetrating vision, ever on the alert for suffering in any form, had
rushed at once to the rescue, comprehending at a glance the situa-
tion of the sightless man. To help him to his feet and aid him home-
ward in the most simple and natural way afforded Dickens such a
pleasure as only the benevolent by intuition understand . — F 1.

AS A PEDESTRIAN.

Mr. Dickens’s capabilities as a pedestrian had been discussed in
America long before he arrived there, and our Transatlantic friends
were not satisfied until a “ match ” had been brought about. This
was arranged at Boston, betwixt Mr. Dolby (Mr. Dickens’s English
agent) and Mr. Osgood (the American publisher). The distance
was to be twelve miles, and the contest was to take place on the
Mill-dam Road, towards Newton. Mr. Dickens and Mr. Fields
(the publisher) were to be umpires, ahd had to walk the whole
twelve miles with their respective men. Immediately the match
was made know, the papers teemed with particulars concerning
it. “ Dickens,” one journal said, “ was a superb pedestrian, good
for thirty miles ‘ on end ’ any day.” The “ articles ” were drawn up
by the great author, and subscribed to by all four gentlemen. The
public were, however, not made acquainted with the place or the
time until after the contest was over. The affair came off on the
following Saturday, at twelve o’clock. The pedestrians were all,
it is said, “appropriately costumed, and. they went at a tremendous
pace. The first six miles were accomplished in one hour and twenty-
three nlinutes, and the return six miles were finished by Mr. Osgood
(the American) in one. hour and twenty-five minutes, lie winning the
match by exactly seven minutes. An elegant dinner was given
by Mr. Dickens at the Parker House, the same evening, to signalise
the occasion. This anecdote shows the heartiness with which he

ON HIS TRAVELS.

137

entered into any healthy outdoor sport he cared to join in, and his
gameness and youthful vigour in keeping up with men not more
than half his age. — H 4.

The “ Articles of Agreement ” for the race had been drawn up in
Baltimore and sent to his friend Fields in Boston, with this injunc-
tion, “ Keep them in a place of profound safety, for attested execu-
tion, until my arrival in Boston.” Section 5 of these 44 Articles ”
says that “ a sporting narrative of the match ” was to be written by
Dickens within a w T eek of the event, and that the same was to be
printed in the form of a broadside, a copy of which was to be care-
fully preserved by each of the subscribers to the articles. These
“ broadsides,” of which only a very few copies were printed, measure
20 by 13 inches, and were printed in red and black with a border
in gold.

The text of the “ Articles of Agreement ” and the “ Sporting
Narrative,” both of which are by Dickens, were printed by Fields
in his Yesterdays with Authors , but ne there submitted dashes for
the actual names of the participants in the match and omitted also
the names of those who w r ero to be invited to the dinner at the
Parker House, as stipulated in Section 6 of the Articles. A few
days before the match Dickens and Fields had w r alked over the
course 44 at the rate of not less than four miles an hour, for one hour
and a half.” Fields says of this preliminary tramp, 44 I have seen
a great many v r alkers, but never one with whom I found it such hard
work to keep up.” Dickens’s object, of course, was to mako the
distance to be covered by the actual competitors on the appointed
day as long as possible. Newton Centre was tH turning-point,
and there, both being winded, they sought some refreshment. But
“ a few sickly looking oranges ” were all they could find. These
they ato sitting on the doorstep of the little shop.” — The Book-
man (New York), vol. xiii. \The Bookman reproduces one of the
“ broadsides” referred to.]

MISTAKEN FOR A “ SMASHER.”

A story is told that on one pedestrian occasion Dickens was
taken for a 44 smasher.” He had retired to rest at Gad’s Hil£ but
found he could not sleep, when he determined to turn out, dress,
and walk up to London — some thirty miles. He reached the
suburbs in the grey morning, and applied at an 44 early ” coffee-
house for some refreshment, tendering for the same a sovereign, the
smallest coin he happened to have about him.

“ It’s a bad ’un,” said the man, biting at it, and trying to twist
it in all directions, 44 and I shall give you in charge.” Sure enough
the coin did have a suspicious look. Mr. Dickens had carried some
substance in his pocket which had oxydized it. Seeing that matters
looked awkward, he at once said, 44 But I am Charles Dickens.”

“Come, that won’t do; any man could say he was ‘Charles
Dickens.’ How do I know ? ” The man had been victimised only
the week previously, and at length, at Mr. Dickens’s suggestion

138

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

it was arranged that they should go to a chemist to have the coin
tested with aquafortis. In due course, when the shops opened, a
chemist was found, who immediately recognised the great novelist
— notwithstanding his dusty appearance — and the coffee-house
keeper was satisfactorily convinced that he had not been enter-
taining a “ smasher.” — H 4.

A SLUMMING EXPEDITION.

In the latter days of ’55 we went on what would nowadays be
called a “ slumming ” expedition. A friend of Dickens’s, a certain
M. Delarue, a banker in Genoa, who was on a visit to Tavistock
House, had a great desire to see some of the low life of London ;
and Dickens accordingly arranged with the police for a party of
us, of which I [Edmund Yates] was one, to dine early together,
and then “ go the rounds ” of the thieves’ quarters in White-
chapel, the sailors’ and German sugar-bakers’ taverns in Ratcliff
Highway, the dens of the Mint, etc. It was a curious experience,
but the interest of it to me was greatly increased by the fact that
I w r as in the company of the man whose genius I had worshipped
so long and so ardently; and when he called me into tho cab, and
we returned alone together, he chatting freely and charmingly, I
wondered whether Fate could have in store for mo greater dis-
tinction or delight. — Y.

AN IMPROMPTU HORNPIPE.

In the train, on the journey from London to Aberdeen, 15th May
1866, the conversation turned upon the subject of dancing, and
Mr. Dickens being an adept in the terpsichorean art, and, above
all, in the performance of a “ sailor’s hornpipe,” it was agreed that
he should execute this national dance. Here, however, an unforeseen
difficulty presented itself, for — though 1 had used every endeavour
to make my arrangements for the journey as complete as possible —
such a thing as an orchestra had never suggested itself as indis-
pensable to travel. But it was settled that Mr. Wills and myself
should form the orchestra ; so we supplied a whistling accompani-
ment?, while the dancer footed it merrily, in spite of tho frequent
collapses of the orchestra in explosive laughter at the absurdity
of the situation and the pretended indignation of tho dancer at tho
indifference of the music. The sudden “ breakdown ” of the engine
through the bursting of a pipe brought tho entertainment to a
close, and we had to w r alk in the fields and woods a little north
of Morpeth for nearly half an hour, until another locomotive could
be found somewhere to take tho train on to Berwick. — D .

“the tables turned.”

Let me commend to the attention of my numerous nameless
correspondents, who have attempted to soil the moral character
of Dickens, the following little incident, related to me by himself,
during a summer evening walk among the Kentish meadows, a few

ON HIS TRAVELS.

139

months before he died. I will try to tell the stcfty, if possible, as
simply and naturally as lie told it to me.

I chanced to be travelling some years ago,” he said, “ in a
railroad carriage between Liverpool and London. Besides myself
there were two ladies and a gentleman occupying the carriage. W e
happened to bo all strangers to each other, but I noticed at once
a clergyman was of the party. I was occupied with a ponderous
article in the Times , when the sound of my own name drew my
attention to the fact that a conversation was going forward among
the three other persons in the carriage with reference to myself
and my books. One of the ladies was perusing Bleak House , then
lately published, and the clergyman had commenced a conversation
with the ladies by asking what book they were reading. On being
told the author’s name and the title of the book, he expressed
himself greatly grieved that any lady in England should be willing
to take up the writings of so vile a character as 0. D. Both the
ladies showed great surprise at the low estimate the clergyman put
upon an author whom they had ueen accustomed to read, to say
the least, with a certain degree of pleasure. They were evidently
much shocked at what the man said of the immoral tendency of
these books, which they seemed never before to have suspected ;
but when he attacked the author’s private character, and told them
monstrous stories of his immoralities in every direction, the volume
was shut up and consigned to the dark pockets of a travelling bag.
I listened in wonder and astonishment, behind my newspaper, to
stories of myself, which if they had been true would have consigned
any man to prison for life. After my fictitious biographer had
occupied himself for nearly an hour with the eloquent recital of
my delinquencies and crimes, I very quietly joined in the con-
versation. Of course 1 began by modestly doubting some state-
ments which I had just heard, touching the author of Bleak House ,
and other unimportant works of a similar character. The man
stared at me, and evidently considered my appearance on the con-
versational stage an intrusion and an impertinence. ‘ You seem
to speak,’ I said, ‘ from personal knowledge of Mr. Dickens. Are
you acquainted with him ? ’ He rather evaded the question, but,
following him up closely, I compelled him to say he had been talk-
ing, not from his own knowledge of the author in question ; but
he said he knew' for a certainty that every statement he had made
was a true one. I then became more earnest in my inquiries for
proofs, which he arrogantly declined giving. The ladies sat by
in silence, listening to what was going forward. An author they
had been accustomed to read for amusement had been traduced for
the first time in their hearing, and they were waiting to learn what
I had to say in refutation of the clergyman’s charges. I was taking
up his vile stories, one by one, and stamping them as false in every
particular, when the man grew furious, and asked me if I knew
Dickens personally. I replied, ‘ Perfectly well ; no man knows
him better than I do ; and all your stories about him from
beginning to end, to these ladies, are unmitigated lies.* The man

140 DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

became livid with rage, and asked for my card. ‘ You shall have
it,’ I said, and, coolly taking out one, I presented it to him without
bowing. We w r ere just then nearing the station in London, so
that I was spared a longer interview with my truthful companion ;
but, if I were to live a hundred years, I should not forget the abject
condition into which the narrator of my crimes was instantly
plunged. His face turned white as his cravat, and his lips refused
to utter w T ords. He seemed like a wilted vegetable, and as if his
legs belonged to somebody else. The ladies became aware of the
situation at once, and bidding them ‘ good-day,’ I stepped smil-
ingly out of the carriage. Before I could get away from the station
the man had mustered up sufficient strength to follow me, and his
apologies were so nauseous and craven, that I pitied him from
my soul. I left him with this caution, ‘ Before you make charges
against the character of any man again, about whom you know
nothing, and of whose works you are utterly ignorant, study to
be a seeker after Truth, and avoid Lying as you would eternal
perdition ! ’ ” — F 1.

STAPLEniJRST RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

It was the end of May I860, when he indulged in a short holiday
trip into France, and on his way home a few days later (June 9th)
a frightful accident overtook the train by which he was travelling,
at Staplehurst (a few miles south of Maidstone), from the effects
of which his nerves never wholly recovered. The train ran off the
rails, and Dickens was in the only carriage that did not go over
into the adjoining stream, being caught upon the turn by a portion
of the ruined bridge, where it hung in an apparently impossible
manner. Happily, the novelist was one of the few passengers who
escaped injury, and with praiseworthy energy he assisted in the
terrible work of getting out the dying and the dead ; for valuable
help thus rendered the directors of the company sent him a resolu-
tion of thanks. — K 1.

After the accident Mr. Dickens never travelled, so he said, with-
out experiencing a nervous dread, to counteract which in some
degree he carried in his travelling bag a brandy flask, from which
it was his invariable habit, one hour after leaving his starting-point,
when travelling by express train, to take a draught to nerve himself
against any ordeal he might have to go through during the rest of
the journey. — D.

The accident has naturally impressed itself very clearly upon his
daughter’s memory. She speaks of the irresistible feeling of intense
dread from which Dickens was afterwards apt to suffer whenever
fie found himself in any kind of conveyance. “ One occasion,” she
says, “ I specially recall ; while we were on our way from London
to our little country station Higham, where the carriage was to
meet us, my father suddenly clutched the arms of the railway
carriage seat, while his face grew ashy pale, and great drops of
perspiration stood upon his forehead, ana though he tried hard to

ON HIS TRAVELS.

141

master the dread, it was so strong that he had to leave the train at
the next station. The accident had left its impression upon the
memory, and it was destined never to be effaced. The hours spent
upon railroads were thereafter hours of pain to him. I realised this
often when travelling with him, and no amount of assurance could
dispel the feeling.” — Dickens’s daughter, interviewed in the Young
Woman , December 1894.

He died on the anniversary of the dreadful Staplehurst railway
accident, and the shock his nerves received on that occasion it is
believed he never entirely got over. The friends in the habit of
meeting Mr. Dickens privately recall now the energy with which he
depicted that dreadful scene, and how, as the climax of his story
came, and its dread interest grew, he would rise from the table,
and literally act the parts of the various sufferers to whom he lent
a helping hand. One of the first surgeons of the day, who was
present soon after the Staplehurst occurrence, remarked that “ the
worst of these railway accidents was the difficulty of determining
the period at which the system comd be said to have survived the
shock, and that instances were on record of two or three years
having gone by before the sufferer knew that he was seriously hurt ! ”
— ■// 4.

OX THE CONTINENT

IN ITALY.

It was not until I obtained a letter composed in flowery Italian,
falsely representing me to be a distinguished American, that I was
finally able to pass through the iron-bound lodge- way into the gardens
of the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fishponds. I had not
found the place easily. None of the Genoese that I had interrogated
could tell me where it was that Charles Dickens had lived, or that
he had ever lived at all in Genoa ; and yet it was here in the
Palazzo Peschiere that he had stayed for a whole twelvemonth and
wrote his Chimes and Old Curiosity Shop and made many notes.

It was a back garden which I first got into, with an abundance
of forlorn grass and weeds and straggling trees. But as I followed
the path that led around at the side of the house I was unexpectedly
confronted by a scene that arrested my steps and filled me with
wonder. The sky was as blue as turquoise, with an edging close
down on the horizon as delicate as the blue of a robin's egg.
This exquisite silken canopy covered a vast amphitheatre of
brown hills patched by blocks of buildings in white and pink that
faced the semicircle in regular parapets. Then as 1 turned mv
eyes to the small things of the foreground I saw the old fountain
with the urchin and the fish, where Dickens had stood on many
mornings watching the birds fluttering at their bath. I went over
to it and sat down on the edge of the basin, that now contained
but a pool of brackish water and some matted grass.

The years that have gone on since Martin Chuzzlcioit was conceived
one morning in the garden of the Palazzo Peschiere have made but
slight difference in the general aspects of Genoa as Dickens saw it, a
“ splendid amphitheatre, terrace rising above terrace, garden above
garden, palace above palace, height above height.”

The Strada Nuova and the Strada Balbi, the famous streets of
palaces, are still there, and so is the wonderful old lane, the Sestiere
della Maddalena, where the jewellers are and the filigree shops —
just a*s they were more than a hundred, yes, two hundred, years
ago — “ And where they are likely to remain some time yet, ,, said my
charmingly adaptable host of the Albergo" Bristol i, Signor Bertolini,
who furnished me with the only human link connecting with the
memory of the great author.

ON THE CONTINENT.

143

“ I can’t say how well my father knew him personally,” said the
Signor, “ but I remember he told me much of him, and seemed to
know of his life here, and had read the Pickwick Papers in English.
He used to point out to me on his walks of a Sunday in the country
the place where Dickens lived when he came to Genoa — the Villa
Bagnerello [or the “ Pink Jail,” as Dickens called it] at Albaro, a
quaint old place surrounded by vine-clad terraces and on a little
niche by the seashore. He lived there for several weeks before he
moved to the Palazzo Peschiere.”

Dickens had with him his wife and young family, and in spite
of his penchant for prowling he enjoyed his domestic life with that
heartiness which was so notably characteristic. He was forever
inviting his friends to share his companionship — never in trouble,
but only in happiness. His letters during his Genoa year are
remarkable in their solicitous and patient fervour in the interests
of others. He attended the play in Genoa on every possible occasion.
Meanwhile he w^as arranging for a series of amateur theatricals to
take place in London directly on h ; s return, and his mind was full
with the project of the Daily News . Besides this he was framing
his story. The Cricket on the Hearth .

In all his Italian journeys Dickens never seemed to care to tarry
anywhere so much as in Genoa. While he was still holding his
residence there he took a little trip into Florence, Rome, Naples,
and Venice. Of Naples he spoke with that candour he always did
of everything he saw, and which few people dared, or do now dare.
He said, “ It is a fine place, but nothing like so beautiful as people
make it out to be.” He thought Venice the wonder of the world,
but he preferred his Genoese walks to the interruption of the gon-
dolier’s stali and premi. He was happy with his s mple fountain of
the urchin and the fish in the gardens of the Palazzo Peschiere, or
rambling through the open places at the foot of the Maddalena with
his eyes boyishly set upon the windows of the little filigree shops.
He loitered in the halls and lobbies of the famous open palaces,
“ the walls of some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by
Vandyke !<£ or in the doors of the neighbouring apothecary, or
stood and watched the maccaroni seller, or else pondered over the
psychological conditions that made so many monks out of masculine
beings constantly in evidence and always repulsive to him.

Of a Sunday ho would visit the w r onderful Oampo Santo.
Toward sunset he liked to go into one of the churches and sit re-
flectively, and then reach the garden to watch the fall of night. —
Deshler Welch, in Harper's Monthly Magazine , August 1909.

IN SWITZERLAND.

In Switzerland Dickens did some of his best work. Amid the
suggestive scenery of the Rhone valley, in Lausanne, Geneva, and
Vevey, were written The Battle of Life, Dotnbey and Son , and parts
of Bleak House and David Copperfidd %

In 1846 (May) he took Rosemont Villa, Lausanne. There he
met the Hon. Richard and Mrs. Watson of Rockingham Castle,

144

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

England, to whom he dedicated David Copperfield , and with whom
he was a lifelong friend and correspondent.

Dickens wrote to his friend M. de Cerjat on 29th December 1849,
after a visit to the Watsons, “We had a most delightful time at
the Watsons’. . . . There was a Miss Boyle staying in the house,
and she and I got up some scenes from the School for Scandal and
from Nickleby with immense success.”

AT BOULOGNE.

Dickens spent the summer of 1853 at Boulogne, in an old chateau
on the Rue Beaurepairc. Bleak House and Little Dorrit were partly
written during this and the following summer in this town. Writing
from Folkestone, the novelist told Mrs. Watson that the name first
proposed for Little Dorrit was Nobody's Fault .

In 1854 Charles Dickens left the chateau in Boulogne and took up
his residence at the Villa du Camp de Droite of the same landlord,
M. Beaucourt, and there began Hard Times . In the summer of
1856 he returned to the Villa Moulineaux.

He often joked about his signature and the flourish to it, and once
to Mrs. Watson wrote : “ P.S .~ I am in such an incapable state
that, after executing the foregoing usual flourish 1 swooned and
remained for some time insensible.”

He frequently referred to the beauties of Switzerland in his letters
to the Watsons, and wrote of Lake Leman : “ It runs with a spring
tide, that will always flow and never ebb, through my memory ;
and nothing less than the waters of Lethe shall confuse the music
of its running until it loses itself in that great sea, for which
all the currents of our life are desperately bent.” — Deshler Welch,
in Harper's Magazine , April 1906.

The photographs accompanying the article are of Rosemont
Villa, the Hon. Mrs. Watson, M. de Cerjat, Rockingham Castle, and a
facsimile of the first page of a letter to Mrs. Watson.

IN PARIS.

“Many merry Christmases, many happy New Years, unbroken
friendships, great accumulation of cheerful recollections, affection
on earth, and Heaven at last for all of us.” This was Dickens’s
Yuletide greeting, dated from Paris, 27th December 1846. He was
for the first time really residing in the French capital. He had, of
course, passed through Paris frequently, but the short stays at hotels
were merely necessary breaks in the interminable journeys of sixty
years since — brief rests after fifty hours in the diligence from
Strasbourg, or before a still longer drive to Marseilles. But he was
now a Parisian householder, having taken on lease those “ most
ridiculous, extraordinary, unparalleled, and preposterous premises ”
at 48 Rue de Courcelles, of which the present-day visitor may still
identify the site (at No. 38) in the longer modernised street.

It was a “ good old-fashioned winter,” that Christmas-tide of
1846. In the bedrooms (“ exactly like opera boxes ”) of the great

146

DfcKENS IN ANECDOTE.

novelist’s house the water froze in the jugs, and on his return from
London he had found the soil snow-covered at Boulogne. The
railway had been opened from Brussels to Paris, so that by posting
to Amiens one could complete the journey by rail. The malle
poste — a little mail-carrying vehicle, not to be confounded with
the far more roomy English stage-coach — legally carried but two
passengers, and Dickens had booked the seats for himself and his
courier, the faithful and resourceful Louis Roche, of Avignon.

44 It is delightful travelling for its speed,” wrote Dickens, “ that
malle poste , and really for its comfort, too.” But on this particular
occasion there was little speed and less comfort. The Boulogne
postmaster told a doleful tale of a son sick in Paris, and begged
to be allowed to squeeze in as far as Amiens. Roche shook a
sceptical head — he had heard of those invalid relatives before —
but the good-hearted Dickens consented to be “ dismally crushed ”
by this “ large man in a great number of greatcoats ” for ten hours*
until they reached the railroad. To crown all, they missed the
midnight train, and had three hours to wait for another. Such
were some of the delights of a Christmas trip to “ Gay Paree ” in
the days of our grandfathers. One can hardly wonder that Dickens
decided on arrival to 4 * take a jorum of hot rum and egg in bed,”
and to “ cover himself up with all the blankets in the house.”

In 1855, the date of the first International Exhibition at Paris,
Dickens decided on “ moving the caravan ” there 44 for six months,”
telling Wilkie Collins that 4 ‘ a good dfcal might be done for House -
hold Words on that side of the water.” As usual at Exhibition
times, he had 44 the most awful job to find a place.” But he finally
secured a flat in the Avenue des Champs Elysces, a stone's throw
above the Rond-point, in a house now pulled down and replaced by
modern maisons de rapport. This was only a few minutes from
the Exhibition below, and his old Rue de Courcellcs place was at no
grqat distance. He was no longer to the average Frenchman the
comparatively unknown author of 1846. Chuzzlcwit was running
as a feuilleton in the Moniteur % and, like the wideawake business
man he usually proved himself, Dickens profited by his visit to
Paris to arrange for a French edition of his principal novels, and
netted 44 sufficient to pay a year’s rent,” and travelling expenses
into the bargain. He was lionised in the literary, artistic, and
theatrical circles in which he always preferred to move. Landseer,
Macready, Thackeray, the Brownings were all in Paris. Wilkie
Collins paid Dickens visits, and, in fact, stayed some time.

The French vied in doing honour to the English novelist. The
description of his reception at Emile de Girard in’s, who dinod him
right royally, while abjectly apologising — 44 This is a mere trifle.
Just a little gathering to make acquaintance. Another time we
will really dine ” — is delightful.

Three months later, Gad’s Hill, the home of Dickens’s later life, was
purchased, and his visits to Paris again became brief and occasional.
Jn 1859 the Tale of Two Cities appeared (it is highly probable that
although the idea of writing the work only occurred to him later.

ON THE CONTI N^T.

147

Dickens gathered much material during his 1846 visit ; for the
Paris of J846 was still largely the old city of the Revolution ; in
1855 Haussmannization had already been vigorously com-
menced). In January 1863 Dickens read his Christmas Carol
at the British Embassy — the fine old mansion in the Faubourg
St. llonore, where King Edward vn. stayed during the visit that
founded the new entente cordiale. — T.P.'s Weekly, Christmas number,
1908.

OLD-FASHIONED E NO R A VINO S .

The periodical organisation of modest but curiously interesting
exhibitions of old prints and drawings illustrating life in Paris at
some special epoch is one of the characteristics of the little known
“ Paris Municipal Library.” The show in the summer of 1908
dealt with the days when Dickens was “ rattled like a single pill
over leagues of stones until, madly cracking, plunging, flourishing
two grey tails about,” lie made his “ triumphant entry into Paris.”
The Luffitte diligence from Calais unharnessing in the inn-yard ;
the “ basso cour du bureau de la poste aux lettres a Paris,” where
Forster (Dickens wrote) was to find “ une voiture qui a etc depeche
(sic) de la Rue de Courcellcs quarante-huit ; ” the market gardens
(now covered with seven-storey mansions) of the Plaine Monceau,
which were but a few minutes' walk from Dickens’s “ ridiculous,
extraordinary, unparalleled and preposterous ” residence near
8t. Philippe du Roule ; the portrait of Frederic Lomaitre and the
stage lions in whom the novelist delighted ; at every turn these
old-fashioned engravings and sketches brought back the famous
44 Three Months in Paris ” of 1846. Here was ti e entrance to
“ La Force ” Prison, now demolished, but immortalised in the
Tale of Two Cities ; there the old Morgue (now also a thing of the
past), where on New Year’s Eve the old man s corpse seemed to
Dickens “an impersonation of wintry 1846;” while Mabille and
the Chaumiere, the aristocratic “ banker's quarter ” of the Chaussee
d’Antin, the sturdy Auvcrgnat hewers of wood and drawers of
water, were ail characteristics of the capital in Dickens’s day. —
T.P.'a Weekly , July 17, 1908.

CONTINENTAL POPULARITY.

The Pickwick Papers is the one of Dickens’s works most popular
on the Continent. For myself, I began a number of pleasant ac-
quaintances over Dickens. Anyone who had a Dickens used to bring
it out to show mo, and anyone who had read him mentioned it as a
bond of union. An Austrian officer w as specially presented to me as
having learned football from an Englishman in Vienna, and having a
pronounced admiration for Nicholas NicJdeby in a German version !
A Frenchman claimed Mr. Pickwick as a mutual acquaintance who
should at once put us on a certain footing of intimacy, “ I know
your Pickwick, mademoiselle ; qu’il est drolo ! ”

In Italy I found “ Carlo ” Dickens on a bookshelf between Gio-

148

DN&ENS IN ANECDOTE.

vanni Stuart Mill and Tommaso Carlyle, and expressed my indig-
nation at the Italianisation of the Christian names, protesting that
we never spoke of “ Peter 4 4 Mascagni in England. We took the
book down, it w r as David Copper field, and there, sandwiched betw^een
pages in which familiar names appeared in a sea of strange print,
were the same old woodcut illustrations that so many of us have
looked at w’onderingly in our early days, and one or two of us, in
blissful, unashamed ignorance, called 4 4 so ugly ” later on. In
David Copper field Agnes does not appeal to the Italians particularly ;
she is the incarnation of the fault with which the British nation in
general is charged — she is 44 cold.” Dora is more human for them ; *
but then, again, how r shocking that any girl should know' so little
of household affairs, and there creeps in another charge : English
women are not really domesticated !

One notices 44 la Signora ” Gamp, with 44 la mia arnica. Signora
Harris,” with a certain misgiving, but — though a translation never
can be quite what the original is — apparently they have lost little
of their humour. Here again, however, Pickwick is the favourite
of Dickens’s books. The Fat Boy, I remember, specially delighted
one enthusiast, while the chops and tomato sauce incident simply
confirms the fact that England is a place where dire consequences
are apt to follow any indiscreet trifling with affections. In Italy
there is no law under which breach of promise actions can be brought.

Dickens and Scott are undoubtedly the English authors most
generally read on the Continent ; as here, they form part of the
library of the boy at school and the young man entering the univer-
sity ; and, no doubt, are factors that unobtrusively make for a
better international understanding. — Household Words, March 26,
1904.

VIII

PERSONA L 1 CHARACTERISTICS

PUNCTUALITY AND METHOD.

There never existed, I think, in all the world, a more thoroughly
tidy or methodical creature than was my father. He was tidy in
every way — in his great, generous, and noble mind, in his handsome
and graceful person, in his work, in keeping his writing-table drawers,
in his large correspondence — in fact, in Ins whole life. I remember
that my sister and I occupied a little garret room in Devonshire
Terrace, at the very top of the house. He had taken the greatest
pains and care to make the room as pretty and comfortable for his
two little daughters as it could be made. He was often dragged
up the steep staircase to this room to sec some new print or some
new ornament which we children had put up, and he always gave us
words of praise and approval. He encouraged us in every possible
way to make ourselves useful, and to adorn and beautify our rooms
with our own hands, and to be ever tidy and neat. I remember that
the adornment of this garret was decidedly primitive, the unframed
prints being fastened to the wall by ordinary white or black pins,
whichever we could get. But never mind, if they were put up
neatly and tidily they were always “ excellent,” or 11 quite slap-up,”
as he used to say. Even in thoso early days ho made a point of
visiting every room in the house once each morning, and if a chair
was out of its place, or a blind not quite straight, or a crural) left
on the floor, woe betide the offender. And then his punctuality !
It was almost frightful to an unpunctual mind ! This again was
another phase of his extreme tidiness ; it was also the outcome of
his excessive thoughtfulness and consideration for others. His
sympathy, also, with all pain and suffering made him quite in-
valuable in a sick-room. Quick, active, sensible, bright and cheery,
and sympathetic to a degree, he would seize the 44 case ” at once,
know exactly what to do, and do it. — Miss Mamie Dickens, in
Ladies 1 Home, Journal (Philadelphia).

SEASIDE REVERIES.

Mrs. Eleanor Christian, who was once on terms of close intimacy
with the great novelist, filled no less than twenty-five pages of
Tem^ple Bar for March 1888 with 41 Recollections of Charles Dickens/’
She tells us that Dickens was extremely difficult for a stranger to

150

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

understand — “ in the evening full of friendly converse and fun, in
the morning he would pass us by with grudging recognition, as if it
annoyed him to be obliged to mutter, ‘ How d’ye do ? ’ ” — and the
writer confesses that she was “ horribly afraid of him sometimes.”
In the mornings “ he was weaving his ideas, and naturally was bored
by interruption ; and afterwards, when his face wore this abstracted
look, I always pretended not to see him.” To watch the sea (the
writer is here referring to Broadstairs) was his greatest delight ;
for horn’s he would remain as if in a trance, with a face of rapt,
immovable calm, and the far-off gaze of his marvellous eyes turned
seaward, totally oblivious of everything around him.

DANDYISMS.

Was Dickens a dandy ? During one of his visits to Paris Miss
Corkran saw him, and “ he had on a wonderful embroidered waist-
coat, a flamboyant tie. and a gorgeous watch-chain.” I heard a
somewhat similar story from the late Mr. Hogarth — a brother-in-
law — whom I knew in the long-remote seventies as a fellow-sub-
editor on the Daily Telegraph. Hogarth did not love Dickens ;
he had ranged himself on the side of the sister who was Mrs. Dickens,
and against the sister who was Dickens’s housekeeper and friend,
and was fond, accordingly, of telling stories to the disadvantage of
his illustrious relative. One of these was that Dickens once appeared
at an evening party in his own house in a dress-coat w r ith scarlet
silk lining. — T.P.'s Weekhjy November 21, 1902.

dickens's beard.

Dickens’s beard, like the Talc of T wo Cities , was probably a
belated outcome of his long residence in Paris in 1855-6. He
■seems to have been as much impressed by the bearded Zouaves (he
saw them come home from the Crimea to Paris with “ strides like
Bobadil ”) as the Londoners were by the bearded Crimean Guards-
men, who are immortalised in the Waterloo Place bronze. He
possibly hesitated, as most Englishmen did, at first, but finding his
fellow-countrymen w’ere emulating the Guards in question, — for
this set the fashion of beards and moustaches in England half a
century ago, — ventured to follow' suit. — “ F. A. W.” (Paris), in T.P's
Weekly , January 10, 1908.

As I [Sir Joseph Crowe] remember him, Dickens was full of fun
and enjoyed company vastly. His abundant hair of sable hue
enframed a grand face, somewhat drawn and thrown into capricious
ridges. His dress w T as florid ; a satin cravat of the deepest blue,
relieved by embroideries, a green waistcoat with gold flowers, a
dress coat with a velvet collar and satin facings, opulence of white
cuff, rings in excess, made up rather a striking whole, and gave in
the main a false impression of one whose power of analysis, whose
memory of scenes he had witnessed and quaintnesses he had observed,
were so great, and whoso capacity for assimilation was so prodigious
that he was able to create without effort, out of all these elements,
the grand originals which fill his novels. — C 6.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

151

POPULARITY AND THE PIN.

Before Dickens’s last visit to America, a banquet took place in his
honour. It was very numerously attended, the chair being filled
by the late Lord Lytton. The night before the dinner, a party of
friends of Dickens met and dined at Wilkie Collins’s, our object
being to wish Dickens a quiet God-speed. The great writer was in
great spirits. I think wo were none of us in evening dress, for
Dickens wore one of the large cravats which had not then gone out
of fasliion, and in that cravat was a most wonderful pin, large in
size, strange in form, an object of inevitable attraction. Seeing
that the jewel drew everybody’s attention, Dickens said, “ I hope
you all like my pin ; it is uncommon, I think. It is hardly too
much to say, I hope, that there is no such pin as this in America.
I have invested in it for the whole and sole purpose of pleasing mv
friends over the water, and I hope you all think I shall succeed.
Dickens’s success was enormous, as everybody knows ; but how far
the pin contributed to it will, perhaps, never bo known. — F 7.

“ TIIE EMPEROll OF CHEERFULNESS.”

How w r ell I recall the bleak winter evening in 1842 when I first
saw the handsome, glowing face of the young man who w r as even
then famous over half the globe ! He came bounding into the
Tremont House, fresh from the steamer that had brought him to
our shores, and his cheery voice rang through the hall, as he gave a
quick glance at the new scenes opening upon him in a strange land
on first arriving at a Transatlantic hotel.

“ Here we are ! ” he shouted, as the lights burst upon the merry
party just entering the house, and several gentlemen came forward
to greet him. Ah, how happy and buoyant he w^as then ! Young,
handsome, almost worshipped for his genius, belted round by such
troops of friends as rarely ever man had, coming to a new country
to make new conquests of fame and honour, — surely it was a sight
to be remembered and never wholly forgotten. . . . You ask me
what w'as his appearance as he ran, or rather flew, up the steps of
the hotel, and sprang into the hall. He seemed all on lire with
curiosity, and alive as 1 never saw' mortal before. From top to
toe every fibre of bis body was unrestrained and alert. What
vigour, what keenness, what freshness of spirit, possessed him l
He seemed like the Emperor of Cheerfulness on a cruise of pleasure,
determined to conquer a realm or two of fun every hour of his
overflowing existence. — F 1. "

ms UNFAILING “ GA1ETE PE CCEUR.”

Nothing was more delightful in “ Boz ” than his unfailing gaield
de cceur , shown by gay remarks and trifling jests. There was no
pretence in these little quips. A most pleasing feature in him was
his welcome of any natural little story, or supposed good thing and
he seemed to be almost grateful and under an obligation at it being
told him. How good-naturedly, too, he used to welcome anything

152

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

in the shape of a jest — feeble though it might be, he making the
best of it ! I suppose there never was a man of his high position
so modest and unobtrusive, or that gave so cordial a welcome to
what others would say.

There are not many now alive who can have played billiards with
“ Boz ” in his own house. I see him now, stooping over the table, 1
his coat off, his large double-glasses on — which gave him rather an
antique, “ old-mannish ” look. And yet how comparatively young
at this time — only fifty-eight ! Since his clay middle-aged folk
have become younger and yet younger, and a man anywhere in the
fifties is now comparatively a juvenile. But what a neighbour to
have ! Only fancy it, Charles Dickens ! “ Boz ” lui-meme, and

not one of your recluse bookish men, weak-eyed and dyspeptic,
shy, shrinking from, or else looking down upon, the community ; but
the genial, hospitable Charles who was ever forward and responsive
to everyone, always in evidence, eager to know — in short, as Carlyle
said, “ the good, the noble, the high-souled, ever-friendly Dickens,
every inch of him an honest man.” — F 2.

A MAGICAL PRESENCE.

Younger people who did not know Charles Dickens, who perhaps
never saw him, can have little idea of the moving power of his
words, his appeals, his very presence, over men. The mere thrill
of his wonderful voice had a magic of persuasion in it. There was
no more strenuous and commanding figure in the England of Queen
Victoria’s reign. — Daily News, January 1, 1S9G.

THACKERAY AND DICKENS : A CONTRAST.

One night I was in the Adelphi Theatre, and went behind to see
an old friend of mine in the company. He presently said to me,
“ Did you see w r ho was in the house ? ” I said, “ Do you mean
Thackeray ? ” He said, “ Yes. Do you know that when ho comes
in he puts all of us out, and wo feel we can’t do anything. Now,”
he continued, “ with Dickens it is exactly the reverse. Wo see him
come in, and he puts us all in a good cue instantly.” Sir Edward
Russell, in That Reminds Me.

All the kindness of heart, geniality, generosity, appreciation of
whatever could be appreciated in others, manly independence,
hatred of humbug, all the leading qualities of his books were com-
ponent parts of his nature. For one holding a position so unique
in the w'orld he was wonderfully modest ; and while he always
quietly and unostentatiously assert ed his own dignity, I never saw
the smallest appearance of “ putting on airs.” His expressed
dislike to allow his daughters to play before the Court as amateur
actresses, his repeated refusal of the Queen’s requests that he would
come round after an amateur performance and be presented to her,
he being in his theatrical costume, were evidences of this self-

1 This billiard-table was sold for the “song” of £3.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS*

153

respect ; and his belief in, and assertion of, the dignity of his calling
were just as marked. Any foothold on the literary ladder, no matter
how low, had its interest for him. “ I do not plead as a stranger/’
he said at the Newspaper Press Fund ; “ I hold a brief for my
brothers.; ” and then plunged into some delightful stories of his
reporting days. What ho was to the world the world knows ;
to me he was the most charming of companions, the kindest
of friends. — Edmund Yates. Y .

I have heard Dickens described by those who knew him as
aggressive, imperious, and intolerant, and I can comprehend the
accusation ; but to me his temper was always of the sweetest and
kindest. He would, I doubt not, have been easily bored, and would
not have scrupled to show it ; but he never ran the risk. He was
imperious in the sense that his life was conducted on the sic volo
sic jube.o principle, and that everything gave way before him. The
society in which he mixed, the hours which ho kept, the opinions
which he held, his likes and dislikes, 1 is ideas of what should or
should not bo, were all settled by himself, not merely for himself,
but for all those brought into connection with him, and it was never
imagined they could be called in question. Yet he was never
regarded as a tyrant : he had immense power of will, absolute-
mesmeric force, as he proved beneficially more than once, and that
he should lead and govern seemed perfectly natural to us :

“We who had loved him so, followed him, honoured him.
Dwelt in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accent,

Made him our pattern to live and to die.” — Y,

I have said that I had many opportunities of meeting Dickens ;
but I should say that my acquaintance with him was very slight
and superficial. I used to feel very proud when he shook hands
with mo and remembered mv name and asked mo how I was
getting on, or some question of that sort ; but I never could protend
to have been ranked oven in the outermost circle of his friends.
I w r as not merely a young man, but a totally obscure young man,
and had nothing whatever to recommend me to Dickens's notice
except the fact that I belonged to the staff of a daily newspaper.
To say the truth, Dickens rather frightened me ; I felt uneasy when
lie spoke to me, and did not quite see what business I had to be
speaking to such a man. His manner w-as full of energy ; there
was something physically overpowering about it, as it then seemed
to me ; the very vehemence of his cheery good- humour rather bore
one down. From the first lie appeared to me to bo a man with whom
J could not venture to differ on any subject. Then again, as was
but natural, ho w^as generally surrounded by a crowd of young men
who sincerely worshipped him, and to whom indeed he seemed to
represent all literature. I know how kind and friendly and en-
couraging he was to many men as young as I was, and whose very
first efforts in literature received his helping hand — I knew many

154

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

such young men, and they were never tired of telling mo how kind
he was, and how gentle, how “ quick to encourage and slow to
disparage,” if I may adopt certain words which I think were used
by himself when speaking of another leader of literature. But I am
only putting down my impressions just for what they are worth,
as the phrase goes, and indeed they are worth nothing at all except
as impressions, and I can only say that Dickens somehow or other
always made me feel rather afraid.

Another man who always made me feel afraid was Thomas
Carlyle ; but that was in quite a different w ay. . . . Tn the case
of Carlyle I did not like to run the risk of being snubbed; in Dickens’s
case I knew' there was no such risk — I knew that he was far too
sw'eet and kindly in nature to snub me, but the very exuberance
of his good-humour bore me down and kept me in my modest
place. — Justin McCarthy. M 5.

“THE CHIEF.”

In his own immediate literary circle, amongst those who were on
the most familiar terms with him, the name “Mr. Dickens,” or
“ Mr. Charles Dickens,” or even “ Charles,” with his most intimate
friends, was never heard. The respect felt for his genius — his
superiority — took a more striking, although more familiar form.
He was invariably spoken of as “the Chief ! At All the Year
Round office, the question was never, “ Is Mr. Dickens in ? ” but
“ Has the Chief arrived ? ” “ Is the Chief in ? ” — II 4.

“pet” theories.

Those who knew' Dickens intimately can often trace in his writings
— while others cannot — allusions to little “pet” theories and
hobbies of his. I have heard, for instance, him often dwell on the
dreadfully tyrannical power of the law of the average, which must
be carried out. He would mention the number of ]>ersons yearly
killed in the London streets — some hundreds, I think — and he would
add this original suggestion : “ Now', here w e are in November, and
the number of such accidents is much below what it should be. So,
is it not dreadful to think that before the last day of the year somo
forty or fifty persons must be killed — and killed they will be ? ” — F 2.

POWERS OF OBSERVATION.

“ Ithuriel,” a writer in C. B. Fry's Magazine, December 1904,
recalled the one walk he had with Dickens. ‘‘ Ithuriel ” had as a boy
taken to classifying passers-by according to their apparent health or
ailment, and so diagnosing their character or history. A French
actor made an appointment with him for “ a friend of his ” who
wished to judge his impressions of passengers.

“ He did not say who his friend was, and when, at seven o'clock
on the following Saturday night, wo met outside The Cock in Fleet
Street, I was not a little staggered to recognise my critic. But I
was a mere boy, and that eminent critic was always close to boy-

156

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

hood, and very soon we were quite happy together. And that
night I had a lesson in observation. I found, before half an hour
had gone by, that I was a mere amateur and tyro ; I seemed to see
and look for one thing only, while that other one appeared to gather
everything into the orbit of his examining vision. Queer names,
the effects of light and shadow, the gait of the passers-by, the
stooped shoulders of one used- to carry heavy burdens, the in-
equality of particular walks of particular people, the sudden hush
of a crowded thoroughfare, the strange area of silence that seems
to intervene between a great river and the changing population
on its banks, the influences of sounds as one stood still (a very
remarkable experience it is at night) on what we supposed we must
call the imagination. The boy had been prepared — he still thinks
in middle life — for a more tricksy and less exhaustive form of
observation — he thinks so. He was sure he was more than sur-
prised, perhaps a little awed, by the swift inlook into the heart of
things that seemed to foreshorten all idle and curious groping, and
make the immediate paraphrase of sounds and visible tilings a kind
of infallible intuition. I ventured to say that in silent places one
could sometimes hear the migrating birds as they sought the south,
miles up in the air. I had been told so by a great bird-lover and
bird-knower, but though we listened hard, they could not bo heard
that night. Since, I have often heard them, but we could not hear
them then.”

A LOVER OF CRICKET.

Mr. Dickens was a great lover of cricket, and in the summer of
1866 he would often hurry back to Ga^Ts Hill after a visit to town,
in order to be present at a cricket match in the field at the back
of the house— -between bis own Higham Club and some other club
in the neighbourhood. — D.

AN ABSTEMIOUS “ BIBBER.”

How he enjoyed all the attendant paraphernalia of Christmas,
particularly the jovial drinks which attend the season ! He would
have ha<l wassail even, had it not been an unacceptable, rather
sickly compound. To hear him talk of the steaming bowl of punch,
with apples “ bobbing about ” merrily, of the Garrick matchless
gin-punch particularly, and the anticipating zest and relish with
which he compounded, these mixtures, one would fancy him quaffing
many a tumbler. But alas ! how often had it been noted, to tho
general surprise, that his whole enjoyment was in the romantic
association ! Never was there a more abstemious bibber. —F 2.

When we arrived in Liverpool from Manchester [April 1866], an
excellent supper awaited us — a pleasant finish to a day of hard work
and excitement. Mr. Dickens brewed a bowl of punch, an accom-
plishment in which he stood pre-eminent, as in ail matters to which
he put his hand. And here, as in all probability tho recurring
mention of such luxuries as these may lead to a misapprehension

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

157

as to Mr. Dickens’s character as an epicure, I must take the oppor-
unity of stating that, although he so frequently both wrote and
talked about eating and drinking, I have seldom met a man who
partook less freely of the kindly fare placed before him. In this
observation I am not singular, as the following quotation from a
letter by a common friend, Mr. James T. Fields, of Boston, U.S.A.,
will testify :

“ He liked to dilate in imagination over the brewing of a bowl of
punch, but i always noticed that when the punch was ready he
drank less of it than anyone who might be present. It was the
sentiment of the thing, and not the thing itself, that engaged his
attention.”

To the consideration of those who, from want of appreciation of a
good man’s heart, deprecate the frequent allusions in his writings
of the things of this life, I would seriously and earnestly commend
this quotatioh. — D.

TEETOTALISM IN’ FAIRYLAND.

In one of his temperance speeches he (George Cruikshank) said :

“ I am ashamed to say that for many years I went on following
the ordinary custom of drinking, till I fell into pecuniary difficulties.
I had some money at a banker’s ; he fell into difficulties, took to
drinking brandy-and-water, arid ended by blowing out liis brains.
I lost my money, and in my distress applied to friends who aided
me for a time, but they themselves fell into difficulties, and I was
forced to extricate myself by the most extraordinary exertions.
In this strait I thought, The best thing I can do is to take to water :
but still I went on for some time before I quite weaned myself from
my own drinking habits. I went to take luncheon with my friend
Dickens (who, I am sorry to say, is not a teetotaller) ; he asked
me to take wine, but I told him I had taken to water, for, in my
opinion, a man had better take a glass of prussic acid than fall into
the other habit of taking brandy-and-water ; and I am happy to
say that Charles Dickens quite agreed with me, that a man had
l >ctter wipe himself out at once, than extinguish himself by degrees
by the soul-degrading and body-destroying enemy.” — J 4.

[Cruikshank’s] Fairy Library had been a failure. Dickens [in
Household Words], among others, had protested against teetotalism
being introduced into fairyland ; and had two years previously
even ridiculed what was called Cruikshank’s temperance fanaticism,
in a paper called “ Whole Hogs.” . . . Cuthbert Bede, in “A Remi-
niscence of Cruikshank ” in Notes and Queries , remarks: “It was
very evident from that article, 4 Frauds on the Fairies,’ and also
from a previous one from the same pen, called 4 Whole Hogs,’ that
Dickens considered Cruikshank to be occasionally given over to
the culture of crotchets, and to the furious riding of favourite
hobbies.” — J 4.

Dickens goes on to point out what would become of our great books
if such a precedent [this refers to the alteration in the text of a

158

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

fairy story by Cruikshank to introduce the idea of temperance]
were to be followed. “ Imagine a total abstinence edition of
Robinson Crusoe , with the rum left out. Imagine a peace edition,
with the gunpowder left out, and the rum left in. Imagine a
vegetarian edition, with the goat’s flesh left out. Imagine a Ken-
tucky edition, to introduce a dogging of that ’tarnal old nigger
Friday, twice a week. Imagine an Aborigines Protection Society
edition, to deny the cannibalism and make Robinson embrace the
amiable savages whenever they landed. Robinson Crusoe would
be ‘ edited 5 out of his island in a hundred years, and the island
would be swallowed up in the editorial ocean.” Then follows a
most humorous story of “ Cinderella,” edited by a stump orator
on Temperance, Ocean Penny Postage, Sanitary Science ; ending
with this pleasant moral : “ Frauds on the Fairies once permitted,
We see little reason why they may not come to this, and great reason
why they may. The Vicar of Wakefield was wisest when he was
tired of being always wise. The world is too much with us, early
and late.”

Poor George Cruikshank dropped his pencil, and Cuthl>ert Bede
has told us how he found the artist, on an October day in 1853,
still smarting from the effects of Dickens’s article. Cruikshank,
however, was not the man to feel a blow and sit down under it. —

J 4.

On our last night at Glasgow [20th July 1848], after a climax
of successful performances at the theatre, — the pieces being Used Up,
Love , Law, and Physic, and Two o'clock in the Morning, — we had
a champagne supper in honour of its being the Amateur Company’s
last assemblage together. Charles Dickens, observing that I took no
wine, said, “ Do as I do : have a little champagne put into ypur^
glass and fill it up with water ; you'll find it a refreshing draught#
I tell you this as a useful secret for keeping cool on such festive
occasions, and speak to you as man to man.” He was in wildest
spirits at the brilliant reception and uproarious enthusiasm of the
audience that evening, and said in his madcap mood, “ Blow
Domestic Hearth ! I should like to be going on all over the king-
dom, with Mark Lemon, Mrs. Cowden-Clarke, and John (his man-
servant), and acting everywhere. There’s nothing in the world
equal to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delighted faces, one
hurrah of applause ! ” — Mrs. Cowden-Clarke. C 1.

“ A GRIEVOUS MISTAKE.”

The discussions, mostly by his friends and intimates, of the
causes of Charles Dickens’s comparatively early death at the age
of fifty-eight, have led to little more than one opinion— that it was
overwork, overwork, and always overwork, mental and physical,
says' John Hollingshead in the Pall Mall Gazette. He remarks
that in writing his strongest characters Charles Dickens always
acted them. ** These spirits of his own conceptions came back
to him in the evening and in the dead of night ; they often moved

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

159

him to rise and walk in his long tramp’s tramp of twenty-seven
miles, from Tavistock Square to Gad’s Hill.” No doubt there is
much truth in this, but the principal reason that Charles Dickens
died at the time he did was that he was in the habit of using vast
amounts of alcoholic stimulants to keep himself up. When lectur-
ing i ti this country he continued to drink the amounts that he
drank when in England, regardless of the different effects of the
climates of the two countries upon persons who use alcoholic liquors.
Ho appeared to believe it was necessary to take a certain amount
with his meals, and at other times, to maintain him. It was a
grievous mistake. We would not be understood as saying that he
was a drunkard in the ordinary acceptation of the term. If he
had become drunk two or three times a month, and had not touched
liquor the rest of the time, he might have lived longer than he did,
though the moral consequences would have been worse. Whoever
tries to keep himself up regularly by any stimulant, in the absence
of which he would temporarily collapse, is nothing more than a
moral and physical speculator ; — is like : concern that declares a
dividend out of the principal, or a family that keeps up appear-
ances of wealth by pawning their belongings and spending the
proceeds. — Christian Advocate (New York), January 29, • 1903.

II [S FAVOURITE BOOKS.

There w r ere certain books of which Dickens liked to talk during
his walks. Among his especial favourites were the writings of
Cobbett, De Quincey, the Lectures on Moral Philosophy by Sydney
Smith, and Carlyle’s French Revolution . Of this latter Dickens
said it was the book of all others w hich he read perpeiually, and
of which he never tired. There were certain books particularly
l^oful to him, and of which he never spoke except in terms of most
ridiculous raillery. Air. Barlow, in Sand ford and Merton , he said
was the favourite enemy of his boyhood and his first experience of
a bore. He had ail almost supernatural hatred for Barlow', “ be-
cause he was so very instructive , and alw'ays hinting doubts with
regard to the veracity of Svwad the Sailor , and had no belief what-
ever in the 4 Wonderful Lamp,’ or 4 The Enchanted Horse.’ ” He
gloried in many of Hood’s poems, especially in that biting 4 Ode
to Rae Wilson.’ . . . One of his favourite books was Pepys’s Diary.
• tt • * Speaking one day of Gray, the author of the Elegy , he said*
“ No poet ever came walking down to }>osterity with so small a
book under his arm.” He preferred Smollett to Fielding, putting
Peregrine Pickle above Tom Jonen. Of the best novels by his con-
temporaries he always spoke with warm commendation, and
Griffith Gaunt he thought a production of very high merit. — F 1.

AT THE ZOO.

What a treat it was to go with him to the Zoological Gardens*
a place he greatly delighted in at all times ! He knew the zoological
address of every animal, bird, and fish of any distinction, and he

160

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

could, without the slightest hesitation, on entering the grounds,
proceed straightway to the celebrities of claw or foot or tin. The
delight he took in the hippopotamus family was most exhilarating.
He entered familiarly into conversation with the huge, unwieldy
creatures, and they seemed to understand him. Indeed, he spoke
to all the unpliilologieal inhabitants with a directness and tact Vhich
went home to them at once. He chaffed with the monkeys, coaxed
the tigers, and bamboozled the snakes, with a dexterity unapproach-
able. All the keepers knew him, he was such a loyal visitor, and
I noticed they came up to him in a friendly way, with the feeling
that they had a sympathetic listener always in Charles Dickens.
—FI.

DICKENS AND THACKERAY *. MORE CONTRASTS.

I remember George Henry Lewes telling me the difference between
Thackeray and Dickens in the way of service to a friend. Dickens,
he said, would not give you a farthing of money, but he would take
no end of trouble for you. He would spend a whole day, for in-
stance, in looking for the most suitable lodgings for you, and would
spare himself neither time nor fatigue. Thackeray would take
two hours^ grumbling indecision and hesitation in writing a two-line
testimonial ; but he would put his hand into his pocket and give
you a handful of gold and bank-notes, if you wanted them. I
know of neither characteristic personally ; but I repeat the illus-
tration as Mr. Lewes gave it.

Talking of Dickens and Thackeray, it is curious how continually
they are put in opposition to each other. Each stood at the head
of a distinct school of thought, representing different aspects of
human life, and each had his followers and adherents, for the most
part arrayed in self-made hostile linos, with a very small percentage
of that tertium quid — those impartial critics who could admire both
with equal favour. This kind of antagonism is very common. . . .
But it sprang in each instance from the admirers, not the prin-
cipals ; and in the ease of Thackeray and Dickens it was emphatic-
ally made for, and not by, them.

Both these men illustrated the truth which so few see, or acknow-
ledge when even they do see it, of that divorcement of intellect
and character which leads to what men are pleased to call incon-
sistencies. Thackeray, who saw the faults and frailties of human
nature so clearly, was the gentlest-hearted, most generous, most
loving of men. Dickens, whose whole mind went to almost morbid
tenderness and sympathy, was infinitely less plastic, less self -giving,
less personally sympathetic. Energetic to restlessness, lie spared
himself no trouble, as has been said, but he was a keen man of busi-
ness and a hard bargainer, and his will was as resolute as his pride
was indomitable. In the latter years of his life no one could move
him ; and his nearest and dearest friends were as unwilling to face
as they were unable to deflect the passionate pride which suffered
neither counsel nor rebuke. Yet he was as staunch and loyal a
friend as ever lived ; and, thanks to that strain of inflexibility, he

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS,

161

never knew a shadow of turning — never blew hot and cold in a
breath. At the same time, he never forgave when he thought he
had been slighted.

Dickens had no eye for beauty per se> He could love a com-
paratively plain woman — and did ; but Thackeray’s fancy went out
to loveliness ; and cleverness alone, without beauty — which ruled
Dickens — would never have stirred his passions. Both men could,
and did, love deeply, passionately, madly, and the secret history
of their lives has yet to be written. It never will be written
now, and it is best that it should not be. — Mrs. Lynn Linton, on
“ Landor, Dickens, Thackeray,” in The Bookman (New York), vol. iii.

DICKENS AND “ THE UPPER TEN.”

He was too proud and self-respecting for flunkeyism. He de-
clined to be lionised, and stuck to his own order ; wherein he showed
his wisdom, and wherefor he lias earned the gratitude of all self-
respecting litterateurs and artists not born in the purple. He knew
that in a country like ours, where the old feudal feeling has sunk so
deep, and the division of classes has been so marked and is still
so real — he knew that the biggest lion of the class “ not born ” is
never received as an equal by the aristocracy. He is Samson
invited to make sport for the Philistines, but he is not one of them-
selves, and never will be considered one of themselves. Hence
Charles Dickens, even in the zenith of his fame, was. never to be
seen at the houses of the great ; and with the exception of Lord
Lansdowne and the Baroness Burdctt-Coutts, ho owned no intimate
friendships among the Upper Ten. — Ibid .

He appears to have been introduced to the mistress of Holland
House by Serjeant Talfourd in 1838, the year of his expedition to
Yorkshire with Hablot K. Browne to collect the information repro-
duced in Nicholas Nicldeby. He hoped to mako his appearance
under Talfourd's wing, and in a letter to his friend expressed alarm
at the prospect of a solitary visit. Hampered by the diffidence
natural to one making his first advances towards polite society,
Dickens appears to have fallen an easy victim. Lady Holland
forced him to disclose the plot of Nicholas Nicldeby, and when he
was about to visit America she remonstrated thus, “ Why cannot
you go down to Bristol, and see some of the third and fourth class
people, and they'll do just as well.” — Charles Lloyd Sanders, in The
Holland House Circle .

FREEDOM FROM JEALOUSY.

Yet Charles Dickens had warm sympathies too, and his true
friends never found him wanting. To those whom he affected
ho was princely in his helpfulness — always remembering that this
helpfulness took other forms than that of pecuniary aid. To Wilkie
Collins be was as a literary mentor to a younger Telemachus, and
he certainly counted for much in Wilkie's future success as a littha -
teur. I was told by one who knew, that he took unheard-of pains
6

162

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

with his younger friend’s first productions, and went over them
line by line, correcting, deleting, adding to, as carefully as a con-
scientious schoolmaster dealing with the first essay of a promising
scholar. In his Rambles beyond Railways , the hand of the master
was ubiquitous and omnipotent, and so in the stories published in
Household Words and All the Year Round. For Dickens was abso-
lutely free from the petty vice of jealousy. He was too self-respect-
ing and withal too conscious of his own powers to be afflicted by
the success of others. — Mrs. Lynn Linton, in “ Landor, Dickens,
Thackeray,” in The Bookman (New York), vol. iii.

HIS TASTE IN HOME DECORATION.

His taste was all for bright colours and pleasant suggestions. Ho
liked flower patterns and lively tints, and the greenery-yallery
school would have found no disciple in him. He was always fidgety
about furniture, and did not stay even one night in a hotel without
rearranging the chairs and tables of the sitting-room, and turning the
bed — I think — north and south. He maintained that lie could not
sleep with it in any other position ; and he backed up his objections
with arguments about the earth currents and positive or negative
electricity. It may have been a mere fantasy, but it was real enough
to him ; and having once got the idea into his mind, it is very sure
that he could not have slept with his head to the east and his feet
to the west, or in any other direction than the one he had decided
on as the best. Nervous and arbitrary, he was of the kind to whom
whims are laws, and self-control in contrary circumstances was
simply an impossibility. — Ibid.

VEXED !

Dickens’s ebullition of temper, which cost his heirs and assigns
so dearly, took place in the library [of Mr. Houghton, the Boston
publisher]. Mr. Houghton said to him that, as lie could not pre-
vent other houses republishing Dickens’s works without payment,
since there was no copyright, he could not afford to pay him more
than a five per cent, royalty, but ho was prepared to pay that.
It was at a time when the American greenback had been terribly
depreciated by the war. Dickens completely lost his temper, and
said, “ Well, if you won’t give me more than that, I don’t want any
of your dirty money. It is not worth anything, anyhow.” When
Mr. Houghton told me this story he added that, just for his own
satisfaction, he had always kept an account of the money that would
have been paid to Dickens and his heirs, and it amounted to a good
many thousand pounds. — Douglas Sladen, in the Leisure Hour ,
December 1900.

LOVE OF THE “ OLD SONGS.”

Dickens was fond of songs, and could troll them well. He knew
all the familiar ones which people of his day were chanting — also all
the old lilts, and knew how to jest on these time-worn favourites.
I have constantly beard him allude to them in his airy, pleasant

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

163

fashion, and burlesque them. As in the case of “ When the wind
blows,” at the opening of The Miller and His Men , that venerable
melodrama, More Sacks to the Mill. (When it was revived he
brought it me to see it.) Naturally, therefore, we find all his stories
full of lively allusions to old songs. Pie took a genuine delight in
Moore’s melodies, and as a matter of course we find constant allusions
to these lyrics . — F 2.

AS A COUNSELLOR.

Pie (Dickens) was himself an excellent man of business, though
in early life he made great pecuniary mistakes by an impatience
of disposition, a desire to get things settled and done with, w r hieh is
shared by many men of letters to their great loss ; he was pains-
taking, accurate, and punctual to a fault ; and the trouble he took
about other people's affairs, especially in his own calling, is almost
incredible. Young men of letters are especially fortunate as
regards the sympathy and assistance the^ receive from members of
other professions. Almost all of us have our Dr. Goodenough.
The lawyers, too, are always ready with their advice. . . . The
chiefs of our own calling are always ready to give a helping hand to
their juniors ; but Dickens looked upon it as an imperative duty
so to do. Many a time have young would-be contributors called
upon me, and produced from their breast-pockets as passport to my
attention a letter of rejection, torn and frayed, and bearing tokens
of having been read a hundred times, from the master. “ He
wrote mo this letter himself,” they would say, as though there were
but one “ He ” in the world. It was generally a prettv long one,
though written at a time when minutes were guineas to him, full of
the soundest advice and tenderest sympathy. There was always
encouragement in them (for of course these were not hopeless cases),
and often — whenever, in fact, there seemed need for other help
besides counsel — some allusion, couched in the most delicate terms
to “ the enclosed.” Dickens not only loved his calling, but had
a respect for it, and did more than any man to make it respected. —
P 4.

In Tinsley's Random Recollections of an Old Publisher , Dickens’s
encouragement of budding authors is not spoken of in so enthusi-
astic a manner. Tinsley says :

“More than once in these pages I have mentioned that I tKink
Charles Dickens was seldom plain - spoken enough with young
authors, and was very apt to pass them on to publishers with notions
in their heads that got there from the great author seeming to say,
“ ‘ Go on, and you will prosper.’ ”

HIS GENEROSITY.

Prior to the rupture of the tender relations between young
Mr. Macrone and Miss Sophia Sala [aunt to G. A. S.] — this was,
I think, in 1836 — he, finding that the capital of the publishing
firm was urgently in need of expansion, borrowed from Miss Sala

164

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

the sum of £500 ; and I believe that a considerable portion of this
money went to pay Charles Dickens for the copyright of Sketches
by Boz. With the subsequent dealings between Dickens and
Macrone I have nothing to do. They are fully set forth in Mr.
Forster's Life ; I am only concerned with the bond of £500. Macrone
died in poverty, and his creditors received nothing ; he left, moreover,
a wife and young children, and Dickens, generous as he always
was, edited for tho benefit of the family of the publisher, who had
certainly not used him very well, two volumes of tales and essays
which appeared in 1841 under the title of the Pic-Nic Papers. The
work enabled him to put something like £300 into the hands of the
widow Macrone ; but I scarcely think that the sale was very large
of the Pic-Nic Papers , which had been got up on the lines of the
Litre des Cent-et-un, which consisted of the voluntary contributions
of a number of celebrated French men of letters, who banded
themselves together to assist the widow of a well-known Parisian
publisher named Ladvocat . — S 2.

DOING GOOD BY STEALTH.

Charles Kent once told me a pretty story of his great friend,
which he told well. He met him at the comer of some street, and
began to relate to him what he knew would please him, how a
certain fanatical Pickwickian — whose name, I think, was Amcott —
used to have the book steadily read to him every night until com*
pie ted, and then ordered it to be begun again all afresh. It took
about three months to get through : so there w r ere four readings
in the year. “ Boz ” was chuckling over his admirer’s enthusiasm,
when a miserable unfortunate, with the usual baby, drew near,
and begged of Kent, who, being at the critical part of his story,
motioned her away. And “ Boz ” appeared also to deprecate the
interruption. Turning for a moment from “ Boz’s ” expressive
face, who was still relishing the jest, adding a comic touch of his
own, he saw his hand gliding behind his back, and a half-crown
drop softly in the woman’s hand ! — F 2.

The late Sheridan Knowles, in a letter to a friend, gave an instance
of his generosity : “ Poor Haydn, the author of the Dictionary of
Dates, and the Book of Dignities (I believe I am right in the titles),
wafis working, to my knowledge, under the pressure of extreme destitu-
tion, aggravated by wretchedly bad health, and a heart slowly
breaking through efforts indefatigable, but vain, to support in
comfort a wife and a young family. I could not afford him at the
moment any material relief, and I wrote to Charles Dickens, stating
bis miserable case. My letter w'as no sooner received than it was
answered — and how ? By a visit to his suffering brother, and not
of condolence only, but of assistance — rescue ! Charles Dickens
offered his purse to poor Haydn, and subsequently brought tho case
before the Literary Society, and so appealingly as to produce an
immediate supply of £60. I need not say another word. I need
not remark that such benevolence is not likely to occur solitarily.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

165

The fact I communicate I learned from poor Haydn himself . Dickens
never breathed a word to me about it.”

The ensuing month (November 1855) an appeal was made on
behalf of Johnson’s god-daughter, signed by nineteen eminent
literary men, including Dickens, Hallamf Disraeli, Carlyle, Thack-
eray, Milman, and Macaulay. A large sum of money was raised,
but the recipient did not live many years to enjoy the annuity
secured for her.

Among distinguished visitors to America who remembered and
greeted Mrs. Clem, Edgar Allan Poe’s venerable mother-in-law,
was Charles Dickens, and he generously entreated her acceptance
of one hundred and fifty dollars, accompanying the gift with the
assurance of his sympathy. — P 6.

During his stay [second visit to America] he was besieged to
such an extent with applications for his autograph, that he was
obliged to have printed a form in reply : “To comply with your
modest request would not be reasonably possible.” To envelope,
direct, and post these replies, the services of three secretaries were
required. Applications of another kind, however, were personally
attended to. Thus it was told there, that a lady of Charleston,
a great admirer of Mr. Dickens's writings, but unfortunately
paralysed in her limbs from an accident, so that she could not walk,
wrote to ask if the doors of the “ Temple ” could be opened to her
earlier than the usual hour, that she might be lifted into the hall
unobserved. Mr. Dickens immediately acknowledged the note,
gave the requisite order for the lady’s accommodation, and claimed
the honour of presenting her, besides, with complimen.ary tickets
of admission. — // 4.

When acting in Edinburgh, for Leigh Hunt’s benefit, with Charles
Dickens and his brilliant dramatis persona*, news came to him
[George Cruikshank] that a country editor, with a large family,
whom he had often previously helped, was on the edge of ruin for
want of fifty pounds.

“ I must, send it to the poor fellow,” lie said to Dickens, “ immedi-
ately.”

“ That would be very kind to him,” answered Dickens, “ but
very unkind to yourself. By the bye, have you got fifty pounds in
your pocket ? ”

“ Oh dear, no,” was Cruikshank’s reply, “ but I want you to lend
me the money to send to him — now — at oneo.”

Dickens's rejoinder was not resort to his cheque-book, but the
remark that he knew George’s incapable friend would be as badly
off as ever after the execution had been paid out of his house, even
if the money was sent.

“ Then,” he added, “ you would deny yourself all sorts of things
and bo miserable till you paid mo back. That I can’t stand, so I
must decline .” — J 4.

One of these many kindnesses [to tramps, etc.], came to the public
ear during the last summer of his life. He was dressing in his own

166

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

bedroom in the morning, when he saw two Savoyards and two bears
come up to the Falstaff Inn opposite. While he was watching the
odd company, two English bullies joined the little party and in-
sisted upon taking the muzzles off the bears in order to have a dance
with them. “ At once,” said Dickens, “ I saw there would be
trouble, and I watched the scene with the greatest anxiety. In a
moment I saw how things were going, and without delay I found
myself outside the gate. I called the gardener on the way, but he
managed to hold himself at a safe distance behind the fence. I put
the Savoyards instantly in a secure position, asked the bullies what
they were at, forced them to muzzle the bears again, under threats
of sending for the police, and ended the whole affair in so short a
time that I was not missed from the house. Unfortunately, while
I w r as covered with dust and blood, for the bears had already
attacked one of the men when I arrived, I heard a carriage roll by.
I thought nothing of it at the time, but the report in the foreign
journals which startled and shocked my friends so much came
probably from the occupants of that vehicle. Unhappily, in my
desire to save the men, I entirely forgot the dogs, and ordered the
bears to be carried into the stable-yard until the scuffle should be
over, w f hen a tremendous tumult arose between the bears and the
dogs. Fortunately we were able to separate them without injury,
and the "whole was so soon over that it was hard to make the family
believe, when I came into breakfast, that anything of the kind
had gone forward .” — F 1.

I remember Leigh Hunt telling me that once when he and Dickens
were coming away from a party on a very rainy night, a cab not
being readily procurable to convey Leigh Hunt home, Charles
Dickens had made him get inside the fly he had in waiting for him-
self and the ladies who were with him, taking his own seat outside ;
upon which Leigh Hunt put his head out to protest, saying, “If
you don’t mind, Dickens, you’ll ‘ become a darn'd, damp , moist , un-
pleasant body ! ' ” which was responded to by a blithe, clear laugh
that rang out right pleasantly in the dark wet night . — C 1.

One of the many gracious deeds performed by Charles Dickens
relates to a thoughtful and graceful act on his part [in 1844] in aiding
a poor carpenter named John Overs, who was dying of consumption.
During his leisure moments this intelligent, but unfortunate, man
had composed several poems and verses, hoping by their publication
to leave some small provision for wife and children. Dickens’s
friend, Dr. Elliotson, who had shown extraordinary kindness to the
sick man, informed the novelist that Overs could not return to his
old work, whereupon he took an especial interest in the case,
and was induced to assist him in publishing several of his verses.
When, at last, Overs became too ill for his ordinary occupation, ho
further aided him in his literary labours by putting a few books
in his way, giving him an occasional word of advice, and reading
his compositions with him whenever opportunity offered. It was
presently decided to issue, in volume form, a selection from Overs’

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

167

stories, and Dickens not only promised to edit them, but to write
an introduction as well— a promise which he fulfilled shortly before
he left England for Italy. The book, entitled Evenings of a W orking
Man , was published in June 1844. The author, however, did not
long survive the event, and it is related that, when at the point of
death, he suddenly demanded w r riting materials and made up a
parcel containing a copy of his little production, in which he had
previously inscribed the novelist’s name, with the intimation that
the author presented it “With his devotion” — a simple and un-
assuming incident that considerably affected the recipient of the
gift . — K 1.

A very kind and graceful act was performed by Dickens this
year [1844]. Mr. Newby published, in one volume, the Evenings
of a Working Man : being the Occupation of his Scanty
Leisure, by John Overs. With a Preface, relating to the Author,
by Charles Dickens. The preface is of the most charming descrip-
tion. It first mentions that Overs was a carpenter, who had em-
ployed his evenings in literary compositions, and applied to him,
as he was relinquishing the editorship of Bentley's Miscellany , for
help to get his writings into notice. After some correspondence,
Dickens trying to dissuade him from the perils of authorship, and
after a personal interview, “ho wrote me,” he says, “ as manly and
straightforward, but, withal, as modest, a letter as ever I read in
my life.” Dickens accordingly consented to assist him, and got
several of his pieces inserted in a magazine . — 11 4.

AS A BELIEVER.

I will dispose here of the question often asked me by correspon-
dents, and lately renewed in many epistles, “ Jf r as Charles Dickens
a believer in our Saviour's life and ' teachings ? ” Persons addressing
to mo such inquiries must he profoundly ignorant of the words of
the great author, whom they endeavour to place by implication
among the “ Unbelievers.” If anywhere, out of the Bible, God’s
goodness and mercy are solemnly commended to the world's atten-
tion, it is in the pages of I )ickcns. I had supposed that these written
words of his, which have been so extensively copied both in Europe
and America, from his last will and testament, dated the 12th of
May, 1869, would forever remain an emphatic testimony to his
Christian faith : “ I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and l exhort my dear children
humbly to try to guide themselves by the teachings of the New
Testament .”— F 1.

ATTITUDE TO NONCONFORMITY.

Everyone knows Charles Dickens’s savage hostility to foreign
missions, exemplified especially in the Pickwick Papers and in Bleak
House. Some reprints from Dickens’s, contributions to his own
periodicals repeat his hatred of Nonconformity — a hatred to the
understanding of which his biography gives no due. Thus he

168

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

describes a service in a dissenting chapel : “ A small, close chapel
with a whitewashed wall and plain deal pews and pulpit contains
a closely packed congregation as different in dress as they are
opposed in maimer to that we have just quitted. There is some-
thing in the sonorous quaver of the harsh voices, in the lank and
hollow faces of the men and the sour solemnity of the women,
which bespeaks this a stronghold of intolerant zeal and ignorant
enthusiasm. The preacher enters the pulpit : he is a coarso, hard-
faced man of forbidding aspect, clad in rusty black, and bearing in
his hand a small, plain Bible, from which he selects some passage
for his text while the hymn is concluding. ... A low moaning
is heard, the women rock their bodies to and fro and wring their
hands. The preacher’s fervour increases, the perspiration starts
upon his brow ; his face is flushed, and he clenches his hands con-
vulsively as he draws a hideous and appalling picture of the horrors
preparing for the wicked in a future state. A great excitement
is visible among his hearers, a scream is heard, and some young girl
falls senseless on the floor, 5 ’ etc., etc. Where did Dickens get his
ideas about Evangelicalism and foreign missions ? Was there ever
any foundation for the stories about the moral pocket-handker-
chiefs blending select tales with woodcuts, or for the African project
for cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha
on the left bank of the Niger ? — “Claudius Clear,” i n British Weekly ,
January 23, 1908.

VIEWS ON SPIRITUALISM.

The following letter refers to Mrs. Milner-Gibson and the spiritual-
istic movement : —

Charles Dickens to E. L. L.

“ Gad’s Hill Place, Higham, by Rochester, Kent/

“ Sunday , Se [dernier 16, I860.

“My dear Mrs. Linton,-- Pray do not suppose that I sent you
that very unspiritual magazine for any other purpose than to keep
you au courant to the subject. It has not in the least disturbed my
equanimity.

“ I hold personal inquiry on my part into these proceedings to be
out of the question for two reasons. Firstly, because the condi-
tions under which such inquiries take place — as 1 know in the recent
case of two friends of mine, with whom I discussed them — are pre-
posterously wanting in the commonest securities against deceit or
mistake. Secondly, because the people lie so very hard, both con-
cerning what did take place and what impression it made at the
time on the inquirer.

“ Mr. Hume, or Home (I rather think he has gone by both names),
I take the liberty of regarding as an impostor. If ho appeared on
his own behalf in any controversy with me, I should take the further
liberty of letting him know publicly why. But bo assured that if be
were demonstrated a humbug in every microscopic cell of his skin
and globule of his blood, the disciples would still believe and worship.

CHARLES DICKENS IN 1870
The year of the novelist's death

169

170

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

“ Mrs. Gibson is an impulsive, compassionate, affectionate woman.
But as to the strength of her head ; — would you be very much
surprised by its making a mistake ? Did you never know it much
mistaken in a person or two whom it devoutly believed in ? — Believe
me very faithfully your true friend, Charles Dickens.” — L 3

SENSE OF THE UGLY — AND THE BEAUTIFUL.

If Dickens had possessed a keen and enthralling sense of beauty,
it would not have been possible for Nature to gift him with what one
may call such a supreme sense of ugliness. His sense of the incon-
gruous, the odd, the unusual, the inharmonious, in physical appear-
ance, is so dominant a faculty in him that one can hardly doubt that
his imagination took a pleasure in emphasising and recording the
repellent facial peculiarities of Uriah Heep, James Carker, and
others. Even in women it is the unexpected, the grotesque, or the
startling that he really notices and brings before us ; never the
beautiful, in any poetic sense of beauty. . . .

Let me, as far as space allows, illustrate my meaning. Turn
to David Copper field, and see how Dickens introduces Mr. Creaklc,
the schoolmaster at Salem House, to his readers.

“ Mr. Creakle’s face was liery, and his eyes were small, and deep
in his head ; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and
a large chin. He was bald on the top of his head ; and h;id some
thin wet-looking hair that was just turning grey, brushed across
each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his forehead.”

Then, on page 123, we have the following description of Mr.
Micaw'ber :

“ I went in, and found there (in the counting-house) a stoutish,
middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes,
with no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and very
shiny) than there is upon an egg, and with a very extensive face,
which he turned full upon me.”

Those are two excellent examples of the constant manner of
Dickens ; a manner so constant, so unchanging, that it w ould
hardly be an exaggeration to say that one might find an instance
of it on almost every page. But this seems to prove conclusively
that, as I have suggested, it was the ugly, the repellent, the in-
congruous, that first arrested the attention of Dickens, especially
the strange and disagreeable in male physiognomy. Dickens, in
fact, had the feminine instinct for instantly detecting and resenting
anything coarse and unpleasant in the appearance of men. That
his own sex happened to be the same as the sex of those ho was de-
scribing only made him more savagely resentful of the inherent
ugliness and coarseness of the average man ; more fiercely intolerant
of it ; more sternly determined to denounce that unpardonable
lack of delicacy and beauty in the male, to hold it up to contempt
and eternal opprobrium. In character after character, in Mr.
Micawber, in Mr. Creakle, in Mr. Oeakle’s lame assistant, Tungay ;
in Jeremiah Flintwinch, in Monsieur Rigaud, in Squeers, the York-

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

171

shir© schoolmaster ; in Arthur Gride, in Ralph Nickleby, in Jerry
Cruncher, inFagin, in Monks, in Wemmick, in Jaggers, in Mr. Murd-
stone, in Mr. Chadband, in Major Bagstock, in Simon Tappertit--
in all these, and in numberless others whose names will quickly occur
to the mind of the student of Dickens, there is some marked, generally
grotesque or repellent, physical peculiarity, or set of peculiarities,
which Dickens not only perceives and resents, but which he is
so resolved that the reader shall also perceive and resent that he
describes the unpleasant details over and over again, insists upon
them, emphasises and magnifies them, till at last the reader begins
to feel as if he were in a surgical instrument maker’s shop, gazing
round in horror upon the assortment of hideously suggestive and
unnatural appliances.

We should reasonably expect that so miraculously keen a sense
of the ugly and iepellent in the male, leading to a repudiation of it
more sustained and vehement than can be found elsewhere in
literature, would be balanced by an equally marked sense of the
physically delicate and beautiful in woman. But this, though we
certainly have a logical right to look for it, is precisely what we do
not find. We do not find, even in Dickens's description of tho
appearance of men intended outwardly to rank as handsome and
distinguished, any definite sense of masculine beauty. This,
though I think it is undeniable, is strange ; and one feels something
akin to pity for the genius, wonderful as it was, which could evi-
dently detect, with the unerring and instant accuracy of a photo-
graphic plate, every inharmonious detail in each male figure or
countenance presented to it ; but was, as evidently, utterly power-
less to discern and reproduce in words — if Dickens had discerned
this he would not have been able to help reproducing it in words,
and in many words — either beauty in man or beauty in woman.
Not even in tho description of James Steerforth is there the slightest
hint of any ability to grasp, as a painter or poet or sculptor would
grasj), any nobly marked detail of masculine grace. This is a
crucial instance, as the magnetic influence of Steerforth over both
men and women — over David Copperficld, over Little Em’ly, over
Rosa Dart le— was supposed largely to reside in his (Steerf orth's)
handsome face and figure. But when it comes to setting that face
and figure before the reader Dickens is compelled to fall back upon
the most commonplace and unsatisfying of generalities. It is not
a question of any intentional reticence. It is clear that Dickens,
though he perceives ugliness with quite painful vividness, does not
see beauty ; or, to be absolutely correct, while he becomes instantly
aware of the slightest flaw or blemish, every spot or scar, every
wrinkle or pimple, on the faces presented to him, he has only a vague
general sense of the beautiful. Beauty makes no detailed impression
either on the retina of his eye or on his mental retina.

[The foregoing passage is quoted from a remarkable critique on
Dickens which Mr. Barlow contributed to the Contemporary Review ,
and which he later issued as a booklet. Mr. Barlow is impressed
by the tragic and abysmal aspects of Dickens’s writings, aspects

172

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

which he thinks go far to associate Dickens with the old Elizabethan
tragic playwrights. But, as “ T. P.” says in reproducing the passage
in his Weekly (November 19, 1909), “ Many good Dickensians
will demur ; ” a view strengthened to some extent by the appended
extract from Celebrities and L by Henriette Corkran] :

“ I remember meeting Charles Dickens one afternoon in my
mother's salon in Paris, llo had on a wonderful embroidered
waistcoat, a flamboyant necktie, and a gorgeous watch-chain. He
pinched my fat cheeks, and I slapped his hand. I recollect him
saying to my mother, ‘ Be sure always to have pretty nurses about
your children. If I have an ugly person about me I am certain to
get into their tricks of ugliness ; if anyone squints, I am sure to
squint too ; if one stammers, I am sure to stammer also. So be
careful to surround your children with healthful and beautiful
influences.’ I made a big grimace, and he made another, and
then we both laughed merrily.”

APPRECIATION OF PICTURES.

That Dickens appreciated pictorial as well as dramatic art is
shown in his speeches. For instance, speaking at the anniversary
meeting of the Artists’ Benevolent Fund on 8th May 1858, he said :

“ I am strongly disposed to believe there are very few debates
in Parliament so important to the public welfare as a really good
picture. I have also a notion that any number of bundles of the
driest legal chall that ever w T as chopped would be cheaply expended
for one really meritorious engraving. — S 1.

Again, in an address at a dinner of the Artists’ General Benevolent
Institution, 29th March 1862, he said :

“ I decline to present the artist to the notice of the public as a
grown-up child, or as a strange, unaccountable, moon-stricken
person, waiting helplessly in the street of life to be helped over
the road by the crossing-sweeper ; on the contrary, the Artist whom
I wish to present is one to whom the perfect enjoyment of the five
senses is essential to every achievement of his life. He can gain
no wealth nor fame by buying something which he never touched,
and selling it to another who would also never touch or see it, but
w T as compelled to strike out for himself every spark of tiro which
lighted, burned, and perhaps consumed him. He must win the battle
of life with his owtl hand, and with his own eyes, and was obliged
to act as general, captain, ensign, non-commissioned officer, private,
drummer, great arms, small arms, infantry, cavalry, all his own
unaided self. When, therefore, 1 ask help for the artist, I do not
make my appeal for one w ho was a cripple from his birth, but I ask
it as part payment of a great debt which all sensible and civilised
creatures owe to art, as a mark of respect to art, as a decoration —
not as a badge — as a remembrance of what this land, or any land,
would be without art, and as the token of an appreciation of the
works of the most successful artists of ibis country.” — S 1.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

173

LOVE OF FLOWERS.

“ The gardener,” said Dickens, addressing the Gardeners* Bene-
volent Institution, on 14th June 1852, “ particularly needs such
a provision as this Institution affords. His gains are not great;
lie knows gold and silver more as being of the colour of fruits and
flowers than by its presence in his pockets ; he is subjected to that
kind of labour which renders him peculiarly liable to infirmity;
and when old age comes upon him, the gardener is of all men
perhaps best able to appreciate the merits of such an institution.
To all indeed, present and absent, who are descended from the first
* gardener Adam and his wife,* the benefits of such a society arc
obvious. In the culture of flowers there cannot, by their very
nature, be anything solitary or exclusive. The wind that blows
over the cottager’s porch, sweeps also over the grounds of the
nobleman ; and as the rain descends on the just and on the unjust,
so it communicates to all gardeners, both rich and poor, an inter-
change of pleasure and enjoyment ; am* the gardener of the rich
man, in developing and enhancing a fruitful flavour or a delightful
scent, is, in some sort, the gardener of everybody else. The love
of gardening is associated with all conditions of men, and all periods
of time. The scholar and the statesman, men of peace and men
of war, have agreed in all ages to delight in gardens. The most
ancient people of the earth had gardens where there is now nothing
but solitary heaps of earth. The poor man in crowded cities gardens
still in jugs and basins and bottles ; in factories and workshops
people garden ; and even the prisoner is found gardening in his
lonely cell, after years and years of solitary confinement. Surely,
then, the gardener who produces shapes and objects so lovely
and so comforting, should have some hold upon the world’s
remembrance when he himself becomes in need of comfort.” —
SI.

ON “ MATERIALISM ” IN PROGRESS.

Dickens delivered the Inaugural Address on the opening of the
Winter Session of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, on 27th
September 1809.

4 1 confess,” he said, 44 that I do not understand this much-used
and much-abvsed phrase — the 4 material age.’ I cannot compre-
hend— if anybody can I very much doubt— -its logical signification.
For instance, has electricity become more material in the mind
of any sane or moderately insane man, woman, or child, because
of the discovery that in the good providence of God it could be
made available for tho service and use of man to an immeasurably
greater extent than for his destruction ? Do I make a more material
journey to the bedside of my dying parent or my dying child when
I travel there at the rate of sixty miles an hour, than when I travel
thither at the rate of six ? Rather, in tho swiftest case, does
not my agonised heart become over fraught with gratitude to the
Supreme Beneficence from whom alone could have proceeded the

174

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

wonderful means of shortening my suspense ? What is the materi-
ality of th3 cable or the wire compared with the materiality of
the spark ? What is the materiality of certain chemical substances
that we can weigh or measure, imprison or release, compared with
the materiality of their appointed affinities and repulsions presented
to them from the instant of their creation to the day of judgment ?
When did this so-called material age begin ? With the use of
clothing ; with the discovery of the compass ; with the invention of
the art of printing ? Surely it has been a Ion" time about ; and which
is the more material object, the farthing tallow candle that will not
give me light, or that dame of gas which will ? The true material
age is the stupid Chinese age, in which no new or grand revelations
of nature are granted, because they are ignorantly and insolently
repelled, instead of being diligently and humbly sought. The
difference between the ancient fiction of the mad braggart defying
the lightning and the modern historical picture of Franklin drawing
it towards his kite, in order that he might the more profoundly
study that which was set before him to be studied (or it would not
have been there), happilyexpresses to my mind the distinction between
the much-maligned material sages — material in one sense, I suppose,
but in another very immaterial sages — of the Celestial Empire
school. Consider whether it is likely or unlikely, natural or unnatural,
reasonable or unreasonable, that I, a being capable of thought,
and finding myself surrounded by such discovered wonders on every
hand, should sometimes ask myself the question — should put to
myself the solemn consideration — can these things be among
those things which might have been disclosed by divine lips nigh
upon two thousand years ago, but that the people of that time
could not bear them ? And whether this be so or no, if I am so
surrounded on every hand, is not my moral sensibility tremendously
increased thereby, and with it my intelligence and submission as
a child of Adam and of the dust, before that Shining Source which
equally of all that is granted and ail that is withheld holds in 11 is
mighty hands the unapproachable mysteries of life and death ?
“ To the students of your industrial classes generally 1 have had
it in my mind, first, to commend the short motto, in two words,
‘ Courage — Persevere.’ This is the motto of a friend and worker.
I would further commend to them a very wise and witty piece of
advice on the conduct of the understanding which was given more
than half a century ago by the Rev. Sydney Smith— wisest and
wittiest of the friends I have lost. He says — and he is speaking,
you will please understand, as I speak, to a school of volunteer
students — he says : ‘ There is a piece of foppery which is to be
-cautiously guarded against, the foppery of universality, of knowing
all sciences and excelling in all arts — chemistry, mathematics,
algebra, dancing, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, Low Dutch,
High Dutch, and natural philosophy. In short, the modern precept
of education very often is, “ Take the Admirable Crichton for your
mo^pl, I would have you ignorant of nothing.” Now,’ says he,
4 my advice, on the contrary, is to have the courage to be ignorant

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

175

of a great number of things, in order that you may avoid the calamity
of being ignorant of everything.’ To this I would superadd a little
truth, which holds equally good of my own life, and the life of every
eminent man I have ever known. The one serviceable, safe, certain,
remunerative, attainable quality in every study and in every
pursuit is the quality of attention. My own invention or im-
agination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would
never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace,
humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention. Genius, vivacity,
quickness of penetration, brilliancy in association of ideas — such
mental qualities, like the qualities of the apparition of the externally
armed head in Macbeth , will not be commanded ; but attention,
after due term of submissive service, always will. Like certain
plants which the poorest peasant may grow in the poorest soil,
it can be cultivated by anyone, and it is certain in its own good
season to bring forth flowers and fruit. I can most truthfully
assure you, by the bye, that this eulogium on attention is so far quite
disinterested on my part as that it has not the least reference what-
ever to the attention with which you have honoured me .” — S 1.

A3 A SPEAKER.

Dickens’s sense of decorum, of what w T as proper when the public
gaze was upon him, gave him, as a rule, a somewhat hard and
indifferent expression when he appeared as a speaker or reader.
There was one occasion, however, when the man himself was re-
vealed. This was at the brilliant gathering in 1807 to wish him
God-speed on his departure for America. While Lord Lvtton
and Lord Chief -Justice C-ockburn were eulogising him, he seemed
really pained, and his eyes softened again and again as they fell
upon the faces of distinguished men sitting in various parts of
the room, or on the emblazoned titles of his works placed among
the decorations. When he came to respond there was no trace
of the actor, or, in one sense, of the artist. What he said came
straight from the heart. The music of his voice ; his manner,
which was perfect, carried away his audience, and never perhaps
has a speech been more successful. Dickens's speeches were never
written and learned off by heart, like so many orations . — R 2.

I heard all of Dickens’s readings, and heard him deliver several
after-dinner speeches. Let me say at once that he was the very
best after-dinner speaker T ever heard ; I do not quite know whom
I should put second to him. His voice was rich, full, and deep,
capable of imparting without effort every tone and half-tone of
emotion, pathetic, inspiriting, or humorous, that any spoken words
could demand. His deep eyes seemed to flash upon every listener
among the audience whom he addressed. I have no doubt that
his after-dinner speeches were prepared in some fashion, but they
carried with them no hint of preparation. They seemed to come
from the very heart of the speaker and to go straight to the heart
of the listener. I heard him make his famous speech at the dinner

176

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

of the Press Fund, in which he described with so much humour
and so much vividness, and with so many sudden gleams of un-
expected pathos, some of his own experiences as a reporter ; and
although most of us in that company were newspaper men in whose
minds speech-making had become somewhat too closely associated
with mechanical taskwork, I think we were all of us alike carried
away by the extraordinary charm of that speech. Dickens’s
readings seemed most of them in their way inimitable, but I
generally found that I could criticise them as I could not criticise
his after-dinner eloquence. — Justin McCarthy. M 5.

When a lad I heard Charles Dickens speak several times — once
at the Princess’s Theatre, Oxford Street, London, in Charles Kean’s
days. On that occasion, the Merchant of Venice having been
performed the night before, Dickens had an eloquent allusive passage
describing what had been the scene. Always his delivery was very
splendid, with much pomp and rotundity in it; but evidencing
that what he was saying had been written and learnt. Another
time I heard him was during the Crimean War. The calamitous
blunders that had taken place and the culpable confusion which
prevailed in the Crimea led to the formation of an Administrative
Reform Association, of which Mr. Roebuck was chairman. A
meeting in support of it was held at Drury Lane Theatre, at which
Charles Dickens was a principal speaker. The place of meeting
again took his thoughts into the theatrical region, from which they
were never very remote, and he had a passage in his speech com-
paring the whole business of the war to the performance of a play.
The peroration of this passage was as follows — and I recall it thinking
of what I have said of Bernard Vaughan, and of the suggestion
of that story that the taught kind of elocution docs not tell best
in British public speaking : “ And if anyone questions,” said the
highly elocutionary novelist — “ if anyone questions our right to
eriticise the performance, our reply is that the orchestra consists
of a very powerful piper, whom we have to pay.” I don’t mean
to say that this — delivered with magnificent inflection— did not
tell. It did. But, all the same, one felt that a little of such speak-
ing went a long way, and that to bring oratory to such elocutionary
perfection was not the way to make it perfect. — Sir Edward
Russell, in That Reminds Me.

Dickens was by far the best after-dinner speaker I have ever heard.
I was so much in the habit of going with him to public dinners,
and the managers of those entertainments so frequently begged me
to propose his health as chairman, that it became a joke between us
as to whether I could possibly find anything new to say. On one
occasion — it was at one of the Newsvendors’ dinners — I said nothing
at all ! I duly rose, but, after a few words, my thoughts entirely
deserted me, I entirely lost the thread of what I had intended saying,
I felt as though a black veil were dropped over my head ; all I
could do was to mutter “ health,” “ chairman,” and to sit down.
I was tolerably well known to the guests at those dinners, and they

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 177

were evidently much astonished. They cheered the toast, as in
duty bound, and Dickens was on his feet in a moment. 44 Often,”
he said— 44 often as I have had the pleasure of having my health
proposed by my friend, who has just sat down, I have never yet
seen him so overcome by his affection and generous emotion as on
the present occasion.” These words turned what would have been
a fiasco into a triumph. 44 I saved you that time, I think, sir ! ”
he said to me as I walked away with him. 44 Serves you well right
for being over-confident ! ” — Edmund Yates. Y.

UIS METHOD OF SPEECH-MAKING.

Mr. J. H. Yoxall, the author of The Wander Years , once met
Lewis Carroll in the dons’ common room at Christ Church, Oxford.
The talk turned on public speaking and the use of written notes.
One of the dons cited Dickens. Dickens, the most brilliant
after-dinner speaker of his day, never used a written note.

44 He used to construct the mental imago of a wheel,” continued
the don, 4 4 with the heads of his speech to form the spokes, and the
illustration for each to form the tire. As he went on speaking,
you could see him knock each used portion of his mental wheel
away with a raised finger, and when he had knocked away ail the
spokes ”

44 He had spoken,” said Lewis Carroll, the only words he uttered
all the evening. — Youth's Companion (Boston), 1909.

HIS RULE OF LIFE.

The novelist’s 44 rule of life,” taken from David Hopperfidd ,
runs as follows : 44 Whatever I have tried to do in life, 1 have tried
with all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I
have devoted myself to completely. Never to put one hand to
anytliing on which I could not throw my whole self, and never to
affect depreciation of my own work, whatever it was, I find now to
have been one of my golden rules.”

AMONG IIIS FRIENDS

FORSTER : THE “ H ARBITRARY GENT.”

There is a lifelike miniature sketch of Forster in his own biography
of Dickens, and done by the latter. Mrs. Gamp is supposed to have
resolved on accompanying Dickens and his troupe of amateur
actors, bound for Manchester and Liverpool, to perform Even/ Man
in. his Humour , for the benefit of Leigh Hunt's exchequer. Forster
was to play Master Kitely. Mrs. Gamp is standing on the platform,
and an attache of Dickens’s company points out to her its various
members as they make their appearance to enter the train — Douglas
Jerrold, Leech, etc. In her own inimitable style she is reporting,
in a letter to Mrs. Harris, what she saw and heard. When Forster
arrives, “ this resolute gent,” she is told, a-coming along here as
is aperrantly going to take the railways by storm — him with the
tight legs, and his weskit very much buttoned, and his mouth very
much shut, and his coat a-flying open, and his heels a-giving it. to
the platform, is a crikit and beeogruffer and our principal tragegian.”
—E.

Among the Fleet Street cabmen Mr. Forster was known as the
“ Bob man,” it being his custom to ride from the office to his
chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, when his wo»k was finished in
the early hours of the morning, for which he pan! one shilling.
The fare was an acceptable one as the distance was short ; but l
fear that the driver, no less than Mr. Carter and the compositors,
would have agreed with his fare’s friend Mr. Dickens, in describing
Mr. Forster as “ a harbitrary gent.” —John Britton, in the Daily
News, January 21, 1896.

Sir John Robinson met Dickens frequently at the board meetings
of the Guild of Literature and Art. Forster he never knew in-
timately, but what he did see of him tended to confirm the cabman’s
dictum that he was a “ harbitrary gent.” Mr. Forster’s great
defect was that he would be the central figure wherever he was— in
society or in literature. Pomposity seemed to be connected with
Forster’s very name. In his works he frequently gave pain to
others, not from any malicious motive, but from an overweening
sense of his own consequence. He had, however, a genuine affection

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

179

for Dickens, and this covered ipany littlenesses. Dickens, although
of course he was aware of this, delighted in a jovial way to make
sport of his friend’s peculiarities. Those who had the pleasure of
walking home with the author of Pickwick after a dinner at which
Forster had been a guest, were delighted with his imitations of the
interruptions, tiie forwardness, the assumptions of infallible know-
ledge of the biographer and essayist. Dickens had a sincere regard
for him, and valued his opinion on literary questions, but he laughed
at him — sometimes to his face — and made boisterous fun of his
pretensions. One of the novelist’s stories was that, dining one
day at Forster’s house, and boiled beef being put on the table, the
host noticed that there were no carrots. 44 Mary,’’ he said, 44 carrots ! ”
The girl said there were none. “ Mary,” was the stern rejoinder
(with a wave of the hand), 44 let there he carrots ! ” — R 2.

Once, when I was staying with Walter Ravage Landor, he had a
small dinner-party, of Dickens John Forster, and myself. This
was my lirst introduction to both these men. 1 found Dickens
charming, and Forster pompous, heavy, and ungenial. Dickens
was bright and gay and winsome, and 'while treating Mr. Landor
with the respect of a younger man for an elder, allowed his wit to
play about him, bright and harmless as summer lightning. He
included me, then quite a beginner in literature, young in years and
shy by temperament, and made me feel at home with him ; but
Forster was saturnine and cynical. He was the 44 harbitrary gent ”
of the cabman’s rank, and one of the most jealous of men. Dickens
and Landor were his property -pocket-boroughs in a way— and he
resented the introduction of a third person and a stranger. — Mrs.
Lynn Linton, in The Bookman (New York), vol. iii.

[Mrs. Lynn Linton always speaks very bitterly of Forster. Else-
where in the same article she calls him 4k treacherous and disloyal
as he was egotistic and jealous.” Referring to his Life of Landor ,
too, she remarks, 44 When he was dead and done with, and of no
more value to the man he had trusted, then the true nature of the
fi icndship came to light, and the result was a cold and carping
and unsympathetic biography.'*]

Forster, as a fine critic, an accomplished man of the world, a
lawyer, and an editor, was the friend and helper of many literary
men. His name figures largely in the indexes of all the beat memoirs
of the period, and it still crops up in new narratives. For many
years he was tho factotum of Browning. The references to him in
the Browning Letters betray at times a certain restiveness, and
occasionally a little dissatisfaction, on tho part of the poet. As a
matter of fact, their relations came to a sudden close, and the
story of the quarrel— sudden and awful as a tornado — has just
been told in Mr. It. 0. Lehmann's very interesting Memories of
Half a Century (L 2). To such an extent did Forster claim
proprietorship over Browning that ho expected the poet to dine
with him every Sunday, or to be invited with Browning to other
tables on that day. Quoting from the diary of his father, Mr.

180

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Lehmann relates how Browning’s nervous and sensitive nature at
last rebelled against this bear-leading.

“ At a dinner at 10 Kensington Palace Gardens, the house of my
brother-in-law, Mr. Benzon, Browning and Forster began to nag
at each other, and so continued for some time, till Browning spoke
of the incredible neglect which had lately occurred at Marlborough
House, where, when the Princess of Wales had suddenly been taken
very ill, no carriage could be got for the purpose of fetching a doctor.
Forster at once ridiculed the story as a foolish invention. Browning

gave chapter and verse, adding that he had it from Lady .

Forster retorted that he did not believe it a whit more on account
of that authority. Suddenly Browning became very fierce, and
said, ‘ Dare to say one word in disparagement of that lady ’ —
seizing a decanter while he spoke — k and l will pitch this bottle of
claret at your head ! ’ Forster seemed as much taken aback as the
other guests. Our host, w T ho had left the room with Sir Edwin
Landseer, on his return at this moment found Browning standing up
in great anger, with a decanter in his hand ready for action. He
had the greatest difficulty in realising the situation. I soon made
him hurry everyone from the room, but all attempts to bring about
an immediate apology or reconciliation were in vain. A kind of
peace was, however, patched up before Forster’s death.”

Forster threatened to be a bachelor after his brief betrothal to
Letitia E. Landon, the graceful writer of album stories and verses,
whose unhappy end on the Gold (’oast is an old story. But in 1856
he astonished his friends by marrying. Particularly he astonished
Dickens, who wrote : “I have the most prodigious, overwhelming,
crushing, astounding, blinding, deafening, pulverising, scarifying
secret, of which Forster is the hero . . . after I knew it (from himself)
this morning, I lay down fiat as if an engine and tender had fallen
upon me.” Forster’s chosen wife was the widow of Colburn, the
publisher, who owned a house in Montague Square, to which Forster
removed, retaining, however, his chambers in 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields
— where Tennyson also lived.

In play, as w r eli as in business, Forster held his own. When
arranging private theatricals, Dickens, with a true appreciation of
his character, awarded him the part in Lyt ton’s comedy Not so Bad
as We Seem of Mr. Hardman, who said severe things and did kind
ones. Leigh Hunt says that in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His
Humour Forster delivered his lines with a musical flow and a sense
of their grace and beauty “ unknown, I believe, to the recitation of
actors at present. At least, I have never heard anything like it
since Edmund Kean’s. The lines came out of his lips os if he loved
them. I allude particularly, in this instance, to his performance of
the Younger Brother. But he did it always, when sweet verse
required it.” Nearly all the manuscripts of Dickens’s novels came
into Forster’s hands, and were bequeathed by him to the nation,
along with his valuable collection of books and paintings. Forster
died in 1876, just when his last biography, his Life of Jonathan
Sunft, w y as appearing. — T.P’s Weekly , November 27, 1908,

AMONG HIS FRIENDS. 181

It is certain that Forster took the utmost interest in Dickens,
even to the extent of seeing everything he wrote through the press,
and as to the genuineness of Dickens’s regard for him I have the
most positive proof. Dickens once wrote to me spelling the word
“ Foster ” (in “ Foster Brothers ”) with an r “ because I am always
thinking of my friend Forster.” Long afterwards, in acknowledging
a service, which I had been fortunately able to do for him, in terms
far more generous than it deserved, he actually signs the letter, not
Charles Dickens, but John Forster ! — P 4.

John Forster, the friend and biographer of Dickens, was also a
life-long friend of Jerrold's ; but we imagine his friendship with
the latter must have been frequently strained almost to snapping-
point. . . . When some friends were talking of Forster, and one of
them suggested that he was to Dickens what Boswell was to Johnson,
Jerrold agreed ; “ But with this difference,” said he, “ that he does
not do the ‘Box’ well.” This was not necessarily unfriendly.
But when, some time after, ho went up to the modem Boswell at
his club, and said, “ Well, Forster, they tell me Dickens pays the
dog-tax for you,” it must be admitted that none but the most good-
natured of friends would ever have forgiven the insult . — F 8.

Forster had the most gentle heart, with a reserve of genuine
tenderness, which was a surprise in so burly and obstreperous a
being. He loved to cherish anniversaries, birthdays, and the like,
and clung fondly to their recurring festivities. When Dickens’s
last birthday came round in 1870, Forster invited him and his
sister-in-law to dine. Charles Kent has described to me how, after
dinner, the kindly host drank to his old friend’s health, and then
in a tumult of feeling, rising up, his full glass in his hand, walked
round to Dickens, and, with tears in his eyes and voice, clasped his
hand and faltered, “ Cod bless you ! ” This little scene was the
fitting close to a friendship of over thirty years, and brings Forster
before us in his most amiable and attractive guise . — F 3.

THACKERAY I TIIK YATES QUARREL.

It was in the year 1836 that Mr. Thackeray, according to an
anecdoto related by himself, offered Mr. Dickens to undertake the
task of illustrating one of his works. The story was told by the
former at an anniversary dinner of the Royal Academy a few’ years
since, Mr. Dickens being present on the occasion. “ I can re-
member ” (said Mr. Thackeray) “ when Mr. Dickens was a very young
man, and had commenced del igh ting the world with some charming
humorous works in covers, which were coloured light green, and
came out once a month, that this young man wanted an artist to
illustrate his writings ; and I recollect walking up to his chambers
in Furnival’a Inn, with tw’o or three drawings in my hand, which,
strange to say, he did not find suitable. But for the unfortunate
blight which came over my artistical existence, it would have been
,my pride and my pleasure to have endeavoured one day to find a

182

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

place on these walls for one of my performances.” The work
referred to was the Pickwick Papers. — H 4.

In the June of 1858, Mr. Edmund Yates, then editing a periodical
called Town Talk , bethought himself, in an evil moment, and when
under the immediate necessity of producing “ copy, 7 ’ to write an
article on 4V Mr. W. M. Thackeray.” The article opened with a
description of Thackeray’s appearance, a description which, though
not Hattering, might probably have been borne with equanimity.
But the writer then went on to say :

” No one meeting him could fail to recognise in him a gentleman ;
his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation either
openly cynical or affectedly good-natured and benevolent ; his
bonhomie is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched. . .

Of this article it is needless to speak in stronger language than
that used by Mr. Yates himself. Even at the time he made no
attempt to defend it ; and, writing years afterwards, he says that
“ no one can see more clearly than ” he does its 4V silliness and bad
taste.” But, granting to t he full that the article was a peccant
article, I fear it must be owned, even by Thackeray’s admirers,
that the punishment indicted on the writer was disproportionate,
and, which is worse, not of an altogether right kind.

He first, on the 14th of June 1858, wrote a tierce letter to
Mr. Yates, a letter so couched as certainly not to facilitate apology
or retraction. Mr. Yates appealed for advice to Dickens, and
the impression produced at the time seems certainly to have
been that Dickens conducted the controversy from this point
in a spirit hostile to Thackeray. Be that as it may, Thackeray
next took the unusual course of appealing to the committee
of the Garrick Club, on the plea that he had only met Mr.
Yates at the Club, and that it was for the Club to protect
him against Mr. Yates’s insults. This, with all admiration for
Thackeray, was scarcely, I think, de bonne guerre. The case was
hardly one on which the Club ought to have been called upon to
adjudicate ; nor, in truth, did Thackeray himself come into court
with perfectly clean hands, for he had made some of the members
figure in his books, and not to their advantage. However, .his
influence at the Club was paramount. Dickens was a member too.
but did not go there very often, while Thackeray was extremely
fond of “ the G.,” “ the little G.,” 41 the dearest place in the world,
as he affectionately called it, and a constant habitue . In July, at a
general meeting, resolutions were passed, notwithstanding all that
Dickens and Wilkie Collins could uige, which, involved the ejection
of Mr. Yates from the Club unless ho made 44 ample apology.” This
he refused to do, and he was turned out — a tremendous punishment,
it must be owned, to a young fellow of twenty-seven just beginning
life.

It is difficult to understand why Thackeray was so ruffled by
an article in an obscure paper like Town Talk. The explanation
given at the time, and very current since, is that the whole affair
was an outburst of long-smouldering jealousy between Thackeray

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

183

and Dickens. Such a surmise must, from its nature, be difficult
of proof or disproof. Mr. Yates says, “ There was no intimacy,
nor anything really like friendship between the two men.” And
this is possibly true, though there are many records of friendly
meetings, as at Boulogne in 1854, and at the private theatricals at
Tavistock House on the 18th of June 1855. Dickens was no critic,
except where art of a similar kind to his own was concerned, and
most likely thought rather meanly of his great rival’s works.
Thackeray, whose literary culture was far wider, expressed, both
in his writings, and also in private correspondence never meant
for publication, a very just appreciation of Dickens’s magnificent
gifts.— F. T. Marzials. M 3.

Here is Mr. Yates’s own story, condensed from his Recollections :

Dickens had taken the chair at the dinner to Thackeray in ’55, and
had alluded to the “ treasures of wit and wisdom within the yellow
covers ” : Thackeray, in his lectures 44 Weekday Preachers,”
declared that he thought Dickens was specially commissioned by
Divine Benevolence to delight mankind. But Dickens read little,
and thought less, of Thackeray’s later work ; and once, when I was-
speaking of the ruthless strictures of the Saturday Review on Little
Dorrit , Thackeray, agreeing with me in the main, added, with that
strange, half-humorous, half-serious look, 4 4 though, between our-
selves, my dear Yates, Little D. is Deed stupid.”

Of course, Thackeray knew perfectly well that Dickens was
advising me in all my movements in this matter, that he had publicly
espoused my cause at the general meeting, and had repugned his seat
on the committee on account of my treatment by that body ; but
the subject was never discussed in any way between the two men
until late in the autumn of this same year [1858].

In November, Dickens, returning to town after an absence of
some months, heard from me that the writ in my action was about
to be served. He expressed to me, I dare say for the fiftieth time,
his conviction that the Garrick Club Committee had no right to
interfere in tho matter, but at the same time reiterated his recom-
mendation that it should be accommodated without legal proceedings
and without public scandal. Upon this, two letters passed between
him and Thackeray. I asked Dickens for these letters, and his
reply was : 44 As the receiver of my letter did not respect the con-
fidence in which it addressed him, there can be none left for you to
violate. I send you what I wrote to Thackeray and what he wrote
to me, and you are at perfect liberty to print the two. I arn, of
course, your authority for doing so.”

44 Tavistock House, Tavistock Square,
London, W.C.,

Wednesday, November 24, 1858.

“My dear Thackeray, — Without a word of prelude, I wish this
note to revert to a subject on which I said six words to you at the

184

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Athenaeum when I last saw you. . . . Can any conference be held be-
tween me, as representing Mr. Yates, and an appointed friend of
yours, as representing you, with the hope and purpose of some quiet
accommodation of this deplorable matter, which will satisfy the feel-
ings of all concerned ? — Yours faithfully, Charles Dickens.”

“36 Onslow Square,
November 26, 1858.

“Dear Dickens, — Ever since I submitted my case to the Club,
I have had, and can have, no part in the dispute. It is for them to
judge if any reconcilement is possible with your friend. I subjoin
the copy of a letter w hich I wrote to the Committee, and refer you
to them for the issue. — Yours, etc., W. M. Thackeray.”

The letter to the Committee practically repeats both Dickens’s
note and Thackeray’s reply.

So far as I am concerned, I never heard that the Committee took
any steps whatever in regard to this communication. Within a few
w r eeks the legal action w T as abandoned on my part, and the affair
•was at an end.

John Forster, in his Life of Charles Dickens , alludes to this matter
as a 44 small estrangement, hardly now T worth mention, even in a
note.” This is all very well ; but the estrangement was complete
and continuous, and Dickens and Thackeray never exchanged but
the most casual conversation afterwards. And most certainly at
the time no one was more energetically offended with Thackeray
than John Forster himself. I perfectly well remember his rage
when Dickens showed him the letter of the 26th November, and how
he burst out with “ He be damned, with his ‘ yours, etc.’ ! ”

I had seen Dickens twice before his departure for Paris — once
when he presided over a dinner given to Thackeray, immediately
before his departure for America (October 11, 1855), at which,
through the kindness of Peter Cunningham, who acted as honorary
secretary, I managed to be present. It was a most interesting
occasion, and Dickens, in proposing the toast of the evening, spoko
with much eloquence. Thackeray, too, was plainly moved, ho much
so that his reply was very short ; he tried to pass off his emotion
with some joke about the coming voyage and the steward, but it
was too much for him. Dickens left early, and Jerrold was voted
to the chair ; whence he made a speech, proposing the health of
Shirley Brooks, as the 44 most rising journalist of the day.” Brooks
at that time had but recently joined the Punch staff. — Y.

Mr. J. Cordy Jeaffreson refers to the famous quarrel as follow's :

” To me the affair was nothing more than 4 Thackeray’s squabble
with Yates about the article in Town Talk,' when I happened to
come upon the author of Vanity Fair , as he was sitting alone in
the dining-room of No. 16 Wimpole Street, waiting to bo admitted
to Henry (nowadays Sir Henry) Thompson’s consulting-room.

44 * Ah, young ’un/ said the great man, greeting me with a beaming

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

185

smile, as I entered the room, ‘ I am glad you have come to bear me
company.’

“ Passing abruptly to a very different subject, he startled me by
saying —

44 4 What do people say, youngster, about my row with Yates ? ’
Possibly because he saw in my face an indisposition to speak frankly
on the delicate matter, lie followed up the question quickly. 4 Come,
tell me what you hear.’

44 On being thus pressed to play the part of a reporter, I replied —

44 4 You do not need to bo told what your enemies and detractors
say. Nor can there be any need for me to tell you what is being
said of you by your extravagant partisans, who, though they
applaud whatever you do, are scarcely to be called your friends.
Your judicious admirers — all the people whose opinion on the matter
is worth a rush, the people whose view' of the affair w'ill be every-
body’s judgment jive-and- twenty-years hence — unite in saying
you have made a prodigious mistake, and are forgetful of your
dignity in showing so much annoyance at a few saucy words, and
in condescending to quarrel w ith so young and unimportant a person
as Mr. Yates.’

“ The immediate consequence of these words w’as that Thackeray,
flushing with surprise and irritation, exclaimed, 4 Confound your
impudence, youngster.’

44 Rising to my feet at this outbreak of petulance, I looked steadily
into my companion’s face, before I answered slowly -

44 4 Pardon me, Mr. Thackeray, for not flattering you with an
untruth, when you pressed me to give you information.’

44 Doubtless these words w ere spoken with a slight show of com-
bat iveness ; for tho youngster did not like being 4 confounded for
his impudence.’ But I am sure they were not spoken in an offensive
tone.

“ 4 You were quite right,’ returned Thackeray, 4 and it is for me
to beg your pardon. You were right to tell me the truth, and I
thank you for telling it. Since Vanity Fair people have been
less quick to tell mo the truth than they were before the book made

me successful. But — but ’ As he said 4 but — but,’ he rose

from his seat to his full height, and looked down upon me with a
face coloured with emotion. 4 But — but/ he continued, 4 you
may not think, young ’un, that I am quarrelling with Mr. Yates,
I am hitting the man behind him /

44 Fortunately, my tcte-d-tUe with the great man was ended at
that moment by Henry Thompson’s appearance in tho room.

44 Though I never had any personal intercourse with Charles
Dickens (albeit ho wrote me two or three letters in 1858, and was
so good as to give me a general invitation to visit him at Gad’s
Hill), I am not without grounds for holding a strong opinion that
his action in the Yates-Thackeray quarrel proceeded in no degree
from jealousy of Thackeray, that he never was jealous of Thackeray,
that he never regarded himself as a competitor with Thackeray
for literary pre-eminence, and that, from the dawn of Thackeray’s

186

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

success to the hour of his death, the rivalry of the two novelists
was a one-sided rivalry. It is certain that Thackeray was keenly
emulous of Dickens’s literary success, and passionately desirous
of surpassing it. There were times when this desire affected him
so vehemently that he may be said to have suffered from Dickens-
on-the-brain. He was enduring an acute visitation of the malady,
when he went into Chapman & Hall’s place of business, and begged
to be told what was the average monthly sale of Dickens’s then
current story. On being shown the account of the monthly sales,
i)e exclaimed, in a tone of mingle l surprise and mortification,
4 What ! — so far ahead of me as all that ! ’

44 As his green leaves had a far larger circulation than Thackeray’s
yellow covers ; as ten persons went to his 4 readings ’ for every
individual who paid to hear Thackeray lecture ; as his works
were no less generally read than Thackeray’s books by the very
classes who are said to have preferred the author of Vanity Fair
to the author of David CopjicrjUld ; as ids professional position
was strengthened by his possession of a singularly successful weekly
periodical, whilst Thackeray never possessed any important periodi-
cal ; as his average yearly earnings must have been three times
as great as Thackeray's average yearly earnings ; as his financial
prosperity was never diminishc l or checked by Thackeray’s success ;
as he was read and applauded by the whole nation, whilst Thackeray
had no strong hold on the public outside the lines of 4 Society,’
and was not universally admired by that small proportion of the
English people — one fails to see why Dickens should have been
jealous of Thackeray, or have regarded him as a competitor who
was running him close, and might possibly get before him. Cer-
tainly Dickens was not jealous of bis literary address and peculiar
ability; for, though he recognised the greatness of his genius
and admired Vanity Fair , Pend (tin it, and The Keuxornes , he rated
them none too highly, and saw little to commend in Thackeray’s
subsequent writings. Mr. Yates, who knew Dickens intimately
and studied him shrewdly, tells us in his autobiography that 4 Dickens
read little and thought iessof Thackeray’s later work,’ — an announce-
ment tlnat may cause readers to remark, 4 So much the worse for
Dickens ! ’

44 Jealousy does not appear to have been one of Dickens’s failings.
He had quite as much reason to be jealous of Sir Edward Bulwer-
Lytton (Lord Lytton) and of Wilkie Collins, when they were in the
fulness of their powers and popularity, as he had to be jealous of
Thackeray ; but he lived in friendliness with them, and invited
them to write for him.” — J 2.

From what I have said of Thackeray’s desire to surpass Dickens,
readers may not infer that it was a passion either mean in itself
or likely to degenerate into envy and hatred of the more popular
novelist. An essentially and uniformly generous passion, it was
attended with a cordial recognition of the genius of Charles Dickens,
and with enthusiastic admiration of his finer artistic achievements.
Though he often spoke to me of Dickens and his literary doings,

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

187

I never heard him utter a word in disparagement of the writer
whom he laboured to outshine. I do not mean to imply that he
admired everything that came from Dickens’s pen, or that he
was never heard to express dissatisfaction with a work by Dickens.
I only wish to imply that I cannot conceive him to have ever spoken
a word in censure of anything written by Dickens that could be
fairly attributed to the malice of jealousy. In remarking to Mr.
Yates that “ Little D. was Deed stupid,” Thackeray said no more
in dispraise of Little Dorrit than he said in dispraise of his ow r n
Virginians , w hen he spoke of it to Motley as a “ devilish stupid ”
book. He repeatedly avowed to me his desire to be thought
a greater novelist than Dickens, but in doing so he always displayed
a passionate admiration of the writer whom he was striving to
precede. On one occasion, after descanting on the excellences
of the new number of Dickens’s then current book, he brought his
list down upon the table with a thump as he exclaimed, “ What
is the use of my trying to run before that, man, or by his side ? I
can’t touch him — 1 can’t get near him.”

My whilom friend, George Hodder, in his Memories of my Time ,
gives a similar example of Thackeray's enthusiastic admiration of
the novelist whom he desired to surpass.

“ Putting No. 5 of Domhey and Son in his pocket,” Hodder says
of Thackeray, “he hastened down to Mr. Punch’s printing-office,
and entering the editor's room, where I chanced to be the only
person present except Mr. Mark Lemon himself, he dashed it on
the table with startling vehemence, and exclaimed, ‘ There's no
writing against such power as this — one has no chance. Read that
chapter describing young Paul's death ; it is unsurpassed — it is
stupendous ! ’ ”

On another occasion he said to me with mingled sadness and
magnanimity, that seemed to me to be both noble and pathetic. “ I
am played out. All l can do now is to bring out my old puppets,
and put new' bits of riband upon them. But, if lie live to be ninety,
Dickens will still be creating new characters. In his art that man
is marvellous.”

I know him to have spoken to other persons in the same strain
and almost in the same words about tho novelist whom be admired
so greatly . — J 2.

The death of Thackeray, December 24, 1863, caused universal
distress. Tho day of his burial at Kensal Green cemetery
(December 30) was beautiful, and a large throng surrounded his
grave. . . . Nearly every literary man in London was present.
1 particularly remarked the emotion of Charles Dickens.

After the funeral I walked away with Robert Browning, and w^e
were presently joined by Dickens, to whom the poet introduced
me. Dickons warmly admired Brow ning, and I was told he once
said to a friend that he would rather have written “ Colombo’s
Birthday ” than any of his novels. As my road lay in another
direction, I mounted an omnibus and sat beside the driver, who
inquired if Charles Dickens had been at the funeral, adding, “ I

188

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

would just like to see that man.” When I told him Dickens had
passed on ahead he lashed his horses, but Dickens had disappeared,
and Browning was with Tom Taylor. But the driver was partly
consoled by seeing the author of his favourite play, The Ticket-of -
Leave Man.

Dickens was a wonder. The more I saw of L6ndon the more
I loved and honoured the London Dante who had invested it with
romance, and peopled its streets and alleys with spirits, so that
the huge city could never more be seen without his types and shadows.
He had his limitations, no doubt ; had be been born in France,
where genius i3 free to deal with every side of human life, Dickens
might have been greater. To me he remained the chief marvel
of his time. I felt some satisfaction in tolling him that Oliver
Twist, Little Nell, and other children of his had been far back in the
forties our beloved friends in a Virginian village of which he had
never heard ; that I had myself lost my position as a model school-
boy and been Hogged for jumping out of the school window and
playing truant in order to see him alight from the stage-coach in
Fredericksburg ; and that his description of the fearful roads
by which he journeyed thither hastened the building of a railway. —
Moncure D. Conway. C 3.

The estrangement between Dickens and Thackeray, rising out
of the Garrick battle, ended in the hall of the Athenaeum, where Sir
Theodore Martin was the witness of his going after Dickens when he
had passed him one day, and saying at the foot of the stairs some
words to the effect that he could not bear to be on any but the old
terms. He insisted on shaking hands ; and Dickens did. “ The
next time I saw Dickens ” (it was not long after), Sir Theodore
writes to me, “ he was looking down into the grave of his great
rival, in Kensal Green. How he must have rejoiced, I thought,
that they had so shaken hands.” Sir Theodore, whose bond with
him was nothing if not literary, thought Thackeray curiously free
from literary jealousy ; and certainly nothing bears this out more
entirely than his casual remarks on Dickens in the Brookfield letters,
such as “ Get David Copperfield ; by Jingo, it’s beautiful ; it beats
the yellow chap of this month” ( Pendennis ) “hollow.” Or this,
which illustrates at the same time his careful spirit of criticism and
proper estimate of his own work :

“ Have you read Dickens ? Oh ! it is charming. [Brave Dickens !
It has some of his very prettiest touches — those inimitable Dickens’s
touches which make such a great man of him ; and the reading of
the book has done another author a great deal of good. In the
first place, it pleases the other author to see that Dickens, who has
long left off alluding to the O.A.’s works, has been copying the
O.A., and greatly simplifying his style, and overcoming the use of
fine words. By this the public will be the gainer, and David Copper-
field will be improved by taking a lesson from Vanity Fair . —
Herman Merivale. M 3.

Mark Lemon told me the story about Edmund Yates, Thackeray,

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

189

Dickens, and the Garrick Club, and 1 was sorry for everyone mixed
up in that affair, especially for Thackeray, who, I rather fancy, was
not absolutely satisfied with the line he had taken, although he
could not subsequently retract. Tantaene coelestibus irae! My
notion of it, in my Gospel “ according to Mark,” is that Edmund
Yates was wrong to begin with, that Thackeray was wrong to go on
with, and that Charles Dickens acted impulsively and rather more
hastily than he would otherwise have done, had it been against
anyone except Thackeray. To paraphrase Mr. Mantalini’s summing
up, “ None were right and all were wrong, upon my life and soul,

0 demrnit ! - Sir Francis Burnand. B 3.

Paxton (afterwards Sir Joseph Paxton, once head gardener of
Chatsworth) became intimate with a group of literary men, including
Dickens, Mark Lemon, and Douglas Jerrold, and joined in starting
the Daily News . The Duke consequently struck up a friendship
with them, and at one time saw a good deal of them. This resulted
in a play written bv Douglas Jerrold being acted by these authors
at Devonshire House.

I once missed meeting Dickens at Chatsworth, who left on the
day of my arrival. Thackeray came that same afternoon, and was
anxious to hear about Dickens’s visit. He wondered wdiether he
had toadied the Duke very much. My impression is that, though
professing to be friends, these two great novelists did not care much
for one another. I once met Dickens at a large dinner at Mr.
Motley’s (the American Minister and historian), but did not get
introduced to him. Thackeray I often met, both in society and
at the Cosmopolitan Club, and it was always with great pleasure,
for, besides be ing an admirable writer, be w T as a brilliant conversa-
tionalist. If i were asked which of these two novelists I preferred

1 should consider it a difficult question to answer, their merits being
so distinct. But if pressed I should perhaps say that Dickens is
the most humorous, but that Thackeray gives us a truer representa-
tion of life. — Hon, F. Leveson-Gower. G.

THE AUTHOR OF “ RAB AND IUS FRIENDS.”

As is well known the author of Rab and His Friends was an
enthusiastic admirer of Thackeray, but he did not relish the writings
of Dickens. In early life l)r. Brown spent a year as an assistant
surgeon at Chatham. Long after he met Charles Dickens for the
first and only time. The conversation turned on nationalities, and
Dickens said that he had been cured of any cockney prejudice
against Scotsmen which he might have had by the heroic conduct
of a young Scotch surgeon which he had witnessed at Chatham
during the cholera time. Strange to say this young surgeon w as
none other than the friend to whom he was telling the story. —
Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century .

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

The glimpses we get of Jerrold at home and among his friends
almost all exhibit him in an amiable light. His son describes an

190

DICKENS BEADING ' * THE CHIMES ” AT 58 LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS, MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1844
From the drauiny by Daniel 31 a elite, II. A.

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

191

afternoon in the garden of West Lodge, Putney, when grave editors
and contributors, after basting one another with knotted hand-
kerchiefs, wound up the afternoon’s play by romping and turning
heels over head among the haycocks in the orchard. And on
another occasion, after a dinner-party in the garden tent, all the
guests, including Dickens, Maclise, Macready, and John Forster,
indulged in a most hilarious game at leap-frog. — F 8.

“Of his generosity 1 had a proof within these two or three years,
which it saddens me to think of now. There had been an estrange-
ment between us - not on any personal subject, and not involving
an angry word — and a good many months had passed without my
even seeing him in the street, when it fell out that we dined each
with his own separate party, in the ‘ Stranger's Room ’ of a club.
Our chairs were almost back to back, and I took mine after he was
seated and at dinner. 1 said not a word (I am sorry to remember),
and did not look that way. Before we had sat so long, he openly
wheeled his chair round, stretched out both his hands in a most
engaging manner, and said aloud, with a bright and loving face
that I can see as 1 write to you, * For God’s sake, let us be friends
again ! A life’s not long enough for this.’ ” 1 am grateful to Mr.

Dickens for this frank and tender revelation. It is a powerful
answer to the writers who have perseveringly endeavoured to present
the subject of this memoir to the world as a bitter cynic. — J 3.

On the morning of the funeral of Douglas Jerrold I had a letter
from Dickens, asking me to dine at the Garrick, as he wanted to
talk to me on a matter of business. I went, and found Albert and
Arthur Smith of the party. They had all been to the ceremony at
Norwood in the morning, and Dickens spoke very strongly of the
fuss and flourish with which it had been conducted. The mourners,
it seemed, wore bands of crape with the initials “ D. J.” round their
arms, and there was a funeral-car, of which Dickens declared he
heard one old w oman in the crowd say to another that it was “ just
like the late Dook o’ Wellington’s.” After dinner we had pens,
ink, and paper, and Dickens unfolded his scheme, which w r as to
raise a fund for the benefit of Jerrold's widow' and family.

It was to be done in the most delicate manner, and all w r ould
assist. Thackeray would lecture, so would W. li. Russell ; Dickens
would give a reading ; there would he a performance of Black-eyed
Busan at the Adelphi, with the veteran T. P. Cooke in his original
character ; a performance of t he Dickens troupe of amateurs in
The Frozen Deep , etc. One great point was to let the public know
what was intended instantly, whilst Jerrold’s death was fresh in
their minds ; another, not to spend too much money in advertising.
With the view of combining those desiderata , Dickens drew up a
short memorandum for the committee, which he asked me to take
round that night to the editors of the principal journals, requesting
them to publish it in the morning, with a few T introductory lines of
their own. The programme was carried out, in its entirety, with
great success, the sum raised being, I think, over tv r o thousand
pounds. — 7.

192

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

THOMAS HOOD.

“ Devonshire Lodge, New Finchley Road,
St. John’s Wood,

Monday [? May 1844].

“ My dear Dickens, — I cannot say how delighted I was to learn
from my friend Ward that you had promised me a little ‘ bit o’
writin’ ’ to help mo to launch afloat again. It has been a cruel
business, and I really wanted help in it, or I should not have an-
nounced it, knowing how much you have to do. I am certainly a

lucky man and an unlucky man too— for S is far better than

the promise of .

“ By the bye, I have heard one or two persons doubt the reality
of a Pecksniff — or the possibility — but I have lately met two

samples of the breed. is most decidedly a Pecksniffian ; as

Ward says, he is so 4 confoundedly virtuous — Yours very truly,

“Thos. Hood.’*

The literary help mentioned above was promptly afforded by
Mr. Dickens, in spite of his own multifarious engagements. It
consisted of a “ Threatening Letter to Thomas Hood, from an
elderly gentleman, by the favour of Charles Dickens, Esq.” About
this time Tom Thumb was the rage in London, and at Windsor,
and the letter was a clever satire on the folly of this childish admira-
tion of “ the abridgement of all that is pleasant in man.”

(In a letter from the same address, but dated simply “ Tuesday,”
Hood remarks on the above “ Letter ” : “ Your paper is capital.
I had been revolted myself by the royal running after the American
mite, and the small-mindedness of being so fond of an unmagnified
man or child. I cannot understand the wisli to see a dwarf twice.'') —
Memorials of Thomas Hood , by his son and daughter.

MARK LEMON.

A serious quarrel broke out between Dickens and the Punch men,
publishers and editor alike — a quarrel wholly on Dickens’s side.
So great had been his intimacy and his influence that he could
cause the insertion of a cartoon and even bring about the alteration
of the Dinner day. But now, on the unhappy differences between
himself and his wife, trouble arose between old friends. Mark Lemon
had naturally leaned towards the wife, from chivalry and sense of
right, and the publishers preferred to take no share in a quarrel
in which they certainly had no concern. On May 28, 1859, the
whole of the back page of Punch was given to an advertisement
of Once a Week , which was to follow Household Words , and to an
explanation of the position of affairs between “ Mr. Charles Dickens
and his late publishers.” ... So this foolish estrangement went on
until, years afterwards, Clarkson Stanfield on his death -bed besought
Dickens to resume his friendship with the man with whom, after
all, he had had no cause of quarrel. So Dickens sent to Lemon
(whom h£ doubtless suspected of having written the publishers*

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

193

damaging defence just quoted) a kindly letter when “ Uncle Mark ”
appeared as Falstaff before the public, and when Stanfield was
buried the two men clasped hands over his open grave ; and, later
on, when Dickens died, some of the most touching and beautiful
verses which ever appeared in Punch were devoted to his memory. —
S 3.

On March 20, 1849, at the Marylebone Police Court, to quote
the faithful record of The Times of the following day : “ Mr.
Charles Dickens (‘ Boz ’) and Mr. Mark Lemon attended at this court
— the latter for the purpose of preferring a charge of attempted
robbery against Cornelius Heame, age nineteen, and the former as a
witness in the case.

“ Mr. Lemon, on being sworn, said, last evening, about nine
o’clock, as I was walking with my friend Mr. Dickens along the Edg-
ware Road, I felt a hand in my coat pocket, and on turning round
saw the prisoner draw his hand therefrom. I gave him a rap with
my stick, when he abused me and ran away. I and Mr. Dickens ran
after him, and he was shortly afterwards taken. He was extremely
violent, and he kicked me very severely on the knee.

“ Mr. Broughton : Did you miss anything from your pocket ?

“ Mr. Lemon : I did not, sir.

“ Mr. Charles Dickens : I w r as with Mr. Lemon, and saw him turn
suddenly round upon the prisoner, who speedily ran away. We
pursued him, and w hen he was taken he was most violent : he is
a very desperate fellow, and he kicked about in all directions.
There was a mob of low fellows close by when he tried Mr. Lemon’s
pocket, and wo w^erc determined that he should not effect his escape
if we could prevent it.

“ Police -Constable 229 D : I was on duty last night in plain clothes,
and saw the prisoner running, with two gentlemen in pursuit of
him, and he was at length captured.

“ Becklcy, another officer of the D Division, deposed to his having
known the prisoner for years as a reputed thief. He had been tried,
and also summarily convicted at this and other police courts.

“ Prisoner : I was walking along quietly w hen the gentlemen
suddenly stopped, and I came against one of them ; they turned round
and struck me, and I said, ‘ What do you do that for ? * when they
laid into me again. I got away, and they called * Stop thief.’

“ Mr. Dickens : When at the station I said I thought I knew the
prisoner, and that I had seen him at the House of Correction.

“ Prisoner : Now, your Worship, ho must have been in quod
there himself, or ho couldn’t have seen me. I know these two gentle-
men well ; they’re no better than sw ell mob-mon, and get their
living by buying stolen goods. (Laughter.) That one (pointing to
Mr. Dickons) keeps a 4 fence,’ and I recollect him at the prison, where
he was put in for six months, while I was only there for two.

“ Both the literary gentlemen seemed to enjoy amazingly the
honour which the prisoner had with such unblushing effrontery
conferred upon them, but, as may be readily imagined, neither of
them confessed to having any connection whatever with that

194

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

‘ highly respectable ’ body, the swell mob, or to obtaining a liveli-
hood by dealing in stolen goods. Mr. Broughton, after remarking
upon the consummate impudence of the prisoner, committed him to
hard labour in the House of Correction for three months.”

This inexpert young thief, with his talent for imaginative abuse,
might almost have stepped out of the pages of Oliver Twist , — A
correspondent in the Yorkshire Post y April 13, 1909.

JOHN LEECII.

Leech, it seemed, could be as humorous as he pleased, and as
whimsical. . . . He made merciless fun of sea-sickness . . . one
would almost be led to believe that Leech shared the immunity of
the robust scoffers whom one usually sees behind a big cigar on
board the yacht or steamboat. Yet when he crossed to Boulogne on
a visit to Dickens, and was received with uproarious applause from
what Americans call the u side-walk committee,” by reason of his
superior greenness and more abject misery, he was quite pleased,
and said with the utmost gratification that lie felt he had made a
great hit. His companionship with Dickens was frequent ; and
when, in 1848, he was overthrown by a wave w’hile bathing at Bon-
church, and received a slight concussion of the brain, the novelist
rendered him the greatest medical service . — S 3.

Soon after the death of John Leech, I communicated to Charles
Dickens a wish wdiich had been expressed by some mutual friends,
that I should write a biography of the artist, and I received the
following reply :

“ Gad’s Hill, Higham, by Rochester, Kent,
Tuesday , December 20, 18G4.

“ My dear Sir, — I am very much interested in your letter, for
the love of our departed friend, for the promise it holds out of a
good record of his life and work, and for the remembrance of a very
pathetic voice, which I heard at his grave.

“ There is not in my possession one single note of his writing.
A year or two ago, shocked by the misuse of the private letters of
public men, which I constantly observed, I destroyed a very large
and very rare mass of correspondence. It was not done without
pain, you may believe, but, the first reluctance conquered, I have
steadily abided by my determination to keep no letters by me, and to
consign all such papers to the fire. I therefore fear that I can
render you no help at all. All that I could tell you of Leech you
know, even (probably) to the circumstance that for several years
we always went to the seaside together in the autumn, and lived,
through the autumn months, in constant daily association.

“ Your reference to my books is truly gratifying to me, and I
hope this sad occasion may be the means of bringing us into personal
relationship, which may not lessen your pleasure in them. — Believo
me, dear sir, very faithfully yours, Charles Dickens.”

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

195

His kind wish was followed by more definite invitations to his
house in London and to Gad’s Hill, and I Jost no time in availing
myself of the privilege which he proposed. John Leech was, of
course, the chief subject of our conversation. Dickens loved the
man as much as he admired the artist. He was one of many who
maintained that Leech should have been a Royal Academician,
seeing that his works would outlive a very large proportion of those
which were exhibited at Burlington House. He said very much
the same which Mr. Forster reports in his life : that Leech was the
first artist who had combined beauty with humorous art . — H 3.

DANIEL MACLISE.

In 1847, Charles Dickens having gone to Paris, Maclise had arranged
to join him there with their common friend, John Forster ; but
his heavy engagements forbade the execution of this pleasant
project, and he wrote to the latter a metrical farewell, which happily
illustrates his gay and sportive humour —

“Go where pleasure waits thee,

But while it elates thee,

Oh ! remember m&

When by the Seine thou rovest,

With the friend thou lovest,

Oh ! still remember me.

When through tho Louvre gazing
On those works amazing,

(Especially) the n remember me.

When Dumas thou meetest,

And Jules Janin thou greetest.

Even then remember me.

If Sue or Victor Hugo,

George Sand, or Kock, to you go.

Still, still remember me.

If Horaco Paul or Ary
You meet, oh ! still be wary ;

Forget not Mac — and me.

In P- re la Chaise while walking,

O’er Montmartre while stalking.

Be sure remember me.

While you hear the Peers debating,

While you hear the Commons prating.

Even then remember me.

On top of Vendome column,

On July’s pillar solemn,

Even then remember me.

196

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

On Notre-Dame’s high towers,

Versailles and Saint Cloud's lowers.

Still, still remember me.

When with Dickens thou art dining.

Think of him at fourteen pining,

Oh ! do then think of mo.

When with him Lafitte <1 linking.

Let not your spirits sinking,

On Lincoln’s Inn then thinking,

A tear bedew your e'e.

Be not such foolish asses,

But while the bottle passes,

Fill, fill your sparkling glasses,

And then remember me.”

— The Mortise Portrait Gall try.

Mr. Maclise often told how that he, John Forster, and Charles
Dickens used to meet at Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead Heath,
and there Dickens would read to them that which he had written
during the week ; and this done, the rest of the time would be passed
in a pleasant commingling of good cheer and genial criticism. “ But
this,” the great artist would add, “ was in the good old days gone
by, when we were all young, and had the world before us.” — // 4.

ROBERT BROWNING.

Residence in Camberwell, in 1833, rendered night engagements
often impracticable ; but nevertheless he ( Browning) managed to
mix a good deal in congenial society. It is not commonly known
that he was familiar to these early associates as a musician and
artist rather than as a poet. Among them, and they comprised
many well-known workers in the several arts, were Charles Dickens
and “ Ion ” Talfourd. — S 6.

The publication of “ Paracelsus ” did not gain for Browning
a large audience, but it brought him friends and acquaintances,
who gave his life a delightful expansion in its social relations.
John Forster, the critic, biographer and historian, then unknown
to him, reviewed the poem in the Examiner with full recognition
of its power and promise. Browning gratefully commemorated
a lifelong friendship with Forster, nearly a score of years later, in
the dedication of the 1863 edition of his poetical works. Mrs.
Orr recites the names of Carlyle, Talfourd, R. Hengist Horne,
Leigh Hunt, Procter, Monckton Milnes, Dickens, Wordsworth,
Landor, among those of distinguished persons who became known
to Browning at this period. — Edward Dowden, in Robert Broiming.

This tragedy of young love and death [“ A Blot in the ’Scutcheon
was written hastily — in four or five days — for Macready. . . ,
Forster read the tragedy aloud from the manuscript for Dickens,

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

197

who wrote of it with unmeasured enthusiasm in a letter, known to
Browning only when printed after the lapse of some thirty years :
“ Browning’s play has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow.
... I know no love like it, no passion like it, no moulding of a
splendid thing after its conception like it.” — Ibid .

It is with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint
froip that of Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of
Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid
thing after its conception, like it ; who, further, at a later date,
affirmed that he would rather have written this play than any work
of modern times . — S 0.

MARTIN TUPPER.

He [Tupper’s agent on his reading tours] has told me some curious
anecdotes about eminent artistes whom he has chaperoned. . . .
Dickens, though with crowded audiences, was not liked, nor nearly

so good as Mr. expected : he earned about with him a sort

of show-box, set round with lights and covered with purple cloth,
in tho midst of which he appeared in full evening costume with
bouquet in buttonhole, and, as Mr. said, “ very stiff.”

Dickens I have met several times, and he gave me good hints
on my first American visit ; a man full of impulsive kindliness and
sincerely one’s friend. His son Charles also I have occasionally
met, the worthy successor to his illustrious father : I may here
state that many of the articles and poems in Household Words are
from the pen of my youngest daughter. — Martin Tupper, in My Life
as an Author.

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

To this date [about October 1841] I assign a very interesting un-
published letter of FitzGerald’s, which refers to a drive with Dickens
— the only occasion, apparently, on which FitzGerald and Dickens
ever met. It is written to Browne (H. K. Browne), and com-
mences, “ Dear Stubby.” After remarks that need not be quoted,
it proceeds : . . . “ I went on Thursday with Alfred (Tennyson) and
Thackeray to drive with ‘Boz.’ He is like Elliott (Robert Elliott,
brother of the young lady who became Browne’s wife), only rather
on a smaller scale — unaffected and hospitable. You never would
remark him for appearance. A certain acute cut of the upper
eyelid is all I can find to denote his powers, but you would doubtless
see much more than I do.” — Thomas Wright, in The Life of Edward
FitzGerald.

THE CARLYLES.

Friday , 17 (1860). . . . The other day, Mrs. Carlyle, in com-
pany with Barlow, met Dickens coming out of Burlington Arcade.
‘‘ God bless my soul, you here 1 ” says Dickens, in such a droll way
as has made Mrs. Carlyle laugh ever since ; such an arch face and
tone of voice has, sharp as a needle. She asked Dickens to come

198

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

and see them ; Dickens said he would, one day next week. “ And
bring ” — the girls, Mrs. Carlyle was going to say ; then, thinking
that would be too formal, said, “ one of the girls.” “Yes, I’ll
bring one of the girls ! ” responds Dickens.

Mr. Carlyle likes Dickens personally very much, though he never
reads his books. — Anne Gilchrist , edited by H. H. Gilchrist.

Forster was a frequent visitor of the Carlyles, and they were
frequent guests of his at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, always the more
willingly on Carlyle’s part when he was to meet Dickens, for whom
in his notes to Forster he professed a genuine affection, though in
conversation he was given to talk contemptuously of “ Dickens
and his squad.” — E.

Carlyle seldom troubled himself about conventionalities. What
he felt, that he said ; and as he felt it ; and it did not matter whether
he sat in his own room or in a public hall. At one of Dickens’s
readings lie has been known to burst out in irrepressible, long-
continued, stentorian laughter that amounted almost to a con-
vulsion ; swinging his hat in the air meanwhile. He had an
unbounded admiration for Dickens. The most conspicuous books
in his dining-room were a set of Dickens’s in red cloth, which had
grown dark with constant use. All his books had the same appear-
ance of much handling. ... I once asked him if he often read novels.

Not often,” was the answer ; ‘‘but when I do 1 have a debauch.”
—6’ 4.

CHARLES WHITEHEAD.

Between Charles Whitehead (who edited The Library of Fiction
for Messrs. Chapman & Hall) and Dickens there was certainly some
congeniality of tastes and sense of humour, but Whitehead drifted
with the stream. He was the leading spirit at the old (Bohemian
tavern, The Grotto, until his best friends could find but little place
in his time. The balance for culture and refinement of literary
tastes was on his side, and he hail the further advantage over
Dickens of eight years’ seniority in ripened judgment; yet it was
Whitehead who produced the coarser work. His Richard Savage ,
a Romance , published in 1842, after having run serially in Bentley 8
Miscellany, was a great success ; but although it appears to be
a brilliant historical study, it is in much only that which any life
may once create, the story of itself so far as autobiographical feeling
is concerned.

Full of humour and wit, he was the heart of any company into
w r hich he entered. But gradually his dissipations dulled his spirits ;
at last he was moody and quarrelsome ; then, conscious of having
misspent his best, shattered in body and mind, he emigrated to
Melbourne in 1857. There his wife died. This much-tried wife
did much towards keeping her wayward, and not always kind-
tempered, husband in as much check as can be known oy those
who will by no means put check upon themselves.

Whitehead would at any time have been unfitted for colonial

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

199

life, where the spirit is of youth and enterprise, and demands litera-
ture and entertainment akin to it ; for his historical romances
and melancholy poetry it had no place ; and meanwhile he drifted
further. Even then, his gifts and personal traits won him one
who would have been his true friend, one who sought no “ case,”
who took the irresolute, broken-down Bohemian to his own home
and care. This friend was a medical and literary citizen of Mel-
bourne. But this chance also Whitehead abandoned, disappearing
no one knew whither. The next scene of the pitiable, sordid drama
was in the streets of Melbourne, where Whitehead was picked up
in a state of exhaustion, and taken to the hospital. There he
died. The last scene of all is a pauper s grave ; therein Charles
Whitehead was laid in July 1862. And of him it could only be
recorded by the local press that lie “ had been engaged on news-
papers.” — T.P.'s Weekly , December 25, 1908.

Perhaps there may be a few of your readers who are unaware that
Charles Whitehead was the man “who might have written Pickwick
“ He was olTered,” says the writer in the Dickensian , November
1908, “ a commission to co-operate with Seymour in producing
monthly the “ Cockney Sporting Sketches,” and declined the offer
on the ground that he was not equal to the task of producing the
monthly numbers with regularity. But he happened to know a
young man who had recently written a series of sketches of London
life, whose name was Dickens, and he recommended the young
author for the task which he could not trust himself to undertake.”

What resulted from this recommendation is now known through-
out the civilised world. Those of us who have studied Dickens,
the man, will know him too well to think he did not appreciate this
sacrifice on the part of Whitehead, but the writer in the Dickensian
goes on to say: “ ... The habit of intemperance had laid hold
of him, and eventually, we are told, for that cause alone, Dickens
was gradually compelled to cease to hold intercourse with him.”
But if there was one man whom Dickens had in mind when he
created Sydney Carton that man was Charles Whitehead. If it is
right to assume a connection between Sydney Carton and Charles
Whitehead, we ought at times to read Pickwick with a heavy
heart, and not forget Charles Whitehead in doing so. — Geo. Stevenson,
in T.P.'s Weekly , January 8, 1909.

JAMES PAYN,

It was in 1856 that I first made the personal acquaintance of
Charles Dickens — a circumstance which to mo was an epoch in my
existence. Like all young persons devoted to literature, I had
had my idols. As a boy I used to have visions of untold wealth,
with the power of laying it at the feet of this or that writer, some-
times to be used for the amelioration of the human race (I had often
given Thomas Carlyle a million or two, in trust, for that purpose),
and sometimes for their benefit. Tennyson I had thus enriched
beyond the dreams of avarice ; Browning I had made exceedingly

200

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

comfortable ; but the chief figure in my literary Pantheon had been
always Dickens. . . . My late friend Calverley, the C.S.C, of Poems
and Translations and Fly Leaves , when lecturer of Christ’s College,
issued a paper on Pickwick after the model of the usual classical
examination papers, containing the most out-of-the-way details,
and forming a crucial test of scholarship.

The prizes were a “ first edition ” of Pickwick , and it will be
interesting to many to learn that the two prizemen were Walter
Besant and Professor Skeat. If Pickwick were to-day made a text-
book for “ exams.” in general, the replies would no doubt be
satisfactory, for there is now a concordance for the whole of
Dickens ; but in 1857 there was no need of cramming, for every-
one knew the book and quoted it. I have the vanity to believe,
had I been qualified as a candidate, I should have gained a prize :
at all events, I had my Dickens at my finger-ends, and the notion
of feeling him there in the flesh — of shaking hands with him — was
positively intoxicating. — P 4.

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.

There [at the St. James’s Theatre] I first saw, as a very young
and eminently handsome man, Charles Dickens. His unsurpassed
works of fiction are, I hope and believe, as widely read in these
days as they were in 1837-8 ; but the present generation, I should
say, can scarcely form an idea of the absolute furore of excitement
which reigned in reading England during the time that the monthly
parts of the novels in the green covers were in progress of publica-
tion. We have all heard the story of the invalid whoso doctor
gravely told him that he feared that he, the sick man, could not
possibly survive for another month ; but who, as the physician
was leaving the room, was heard to mutter to himself, “ Well, at
all events, the next number of Pickwick will be out in a fortnight ; ”
and there is another not quite so well known anecdote, related many
years since by a writer in Blackwood, setting forth how, when he,
the writer in question, was a schoolboy, there suddenly occurred to
him, one Sunday in church and in the middle of a very dull sermon,
the memory of an exceptionally comic episode in Pickwick , that
impelled him to burst out in a prolonged and uncontrollable burst
of laughter ; which act of irreverent hilarity led to his being at
once, and ignominiotisly, removed by the beadle — there were beadles
in those days — from the sacred edifice.

Stories of this kind were as plentiful as blackberries in the early
days of what people used to call the “ Bozomania.” Dogs and cats
used to be named “ Sam ” and “ Jingle,” and “ Mrs. Bardell ” and
“ Job Trotter.” A penny cigar, presumably of British make, was
christened “ The Pickwick.” Gutter-blood publishers pirated the
masterpiece of farcical fiction which was astonishing the English-
speaking world ; and we had the “ Penny Pickwick ” ana the
“ Posthumous Memoirs of the Pic-Nic Club ” in weekly numbers.
Even the more respectable class of cheap periodicals, Olios , Parterres ,
Mirrors , and the like, were not ashamed to print extracts, sometimes

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

201

three or four pages at a time, from each monthly part published by
Messrs. Chapman & Hall. As for ourselves — I mean my own family
in King Street, St. James’s, where we lived on the first floor of a
house right opposite the theatre — my brother Albert, my sister
Augusta, and myself, were content in the course of a couple of years
to get the Pickwick Papers , Nicholas Nickleby 9 and Oliver Twist
by heart. Then we used to “play at ” Dickens, and dramatise
his novels on our own private account. Many a time have I enacted
Bill Sikes and murdered Nancy — otherwise my sister, in the back
bedroom. Then we set to work copying as welt as we could George
Cruikshank’s illustrations to Oliver , and Phiz’s etchings to Pickwick
and Nickleby ; and, unless I am mistaken, my lamented friend
Edmund Yates had a little old scrap-book of mine full of imitations
in pen-and-ink of the etchings aforesaid. Across one of them, an
exceptionally vile one — but this may not be in the book I gave
Edmund — is written in a large bold hand, “ This is not by G. A. S.” —
S 2.

I quarrelled with Dickens. When, fourteen years afterwards,
he died, I wrote a notice of him in the Daily Telegraph ; and shortly
afterwards this notice, considerably expanded, was republished by
Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, of the Broadway, Ludgate Hill.
It was a shilling booklet, which had an immense sale, and it is now —
so the booksellers’ catalogues tell me — scarce, and somewhat costly.
Now in this trifle I made a passing allusion to my misunderstanding
with Dickens early in 1857 ; and, moved by, I hope, a not ungenerous
impulse, I added that in this feud I had been in the wrong.

I revered the writer, and I loved the man. But at a time when
the grave had scarcely closed over him I disdained to say that he
had been as much in tho wrong as I. A spiteful (and, of course,
anonymous) critic in an evening paper, for which I have too much
contempt to name it, went out of his way, while professing to review
a work of mine entitled Things I Have Seat and People I Have Known ,
to say that Dickens was very kind to me, and that it was at his
expense that I went to Russia. Charles Dickens was kind to many
more youthful authors besides myself ; and he was for five years
exceptionally kind to me, for the reason that he had known me in
my early youth. But, confound it ! I gave him malt for his meal.
In the course of those five years I wrote nearly three hundred articles
for Household Words ; and I was such a dullard, so maladroit, so
blind to my own interest, that between 1851 and my return from
St. Petersburg, I never sought his permission to republish one of
those papers. As to tho statement of tho spiteful critic, that I went
to Russia at Dickens’s expense, there is in it a suppression of truth
which is more than a suggestion of falsehood. In the last letter
which he wrote mo before he went away, he said, “ You should have
the means of travelling in comfort and respectability.” I drew a
certain sum to defray my expenses to St. Petersburg ; and there I
found, at Messrs. Stieglitz’, a monthly credit of forty pounds. In
all, between April and November, I received tho sum of two hundred
and forty pounds, eight-tenths of wliich I spent in subsistence and

202

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

travelling outlay ; and I landed in England, as I have said, with
two pounds in my pocket. It logically follows that if I went to
Russia at Dickens’s expense I 'wrote the Journey Due North entirely
on my own.

Where I was to blame in the matter was as follows: About
half a dozen papers remained to be written to complete the plan of
my Journey. I was dissatisfied with what I considered to be the
ungenerous treatment which I had received. I found that I could
earn at least ten pounds a week by working for Henry Vizetelty,
and the delivery of the last half-dozen chapters of the Journey hung
fire. Then came a coolness between myself and Mr. Wills (nominally
sub-editor, but practically editor of Household Words), and then an
open rupture. I demanded payment for my travelling expenses ;
and I was referred to one Mr. Smith, a solicitor, in Golden Square,
who informed me that I had received the sum of two hundred and
forty pounds, as aforesaid, as full remuneration for my services ;
that I owed the proprietors of Household Words nothing, and that
they owed me nothing. But now I come to the cruellest part of
the business. I asked Dickens’s permission to republish the
Journey Due North and the other essays which I had contributed
to Household Words. That permission — although he had already
advised me to haste and republish — he positively refused to grant.
So away into the darkest of nonentities went the two hundred
and fifty pounds w hich Messrs. Routledge, Warne, & Routledge w ere
to pay me.

It appeared that, as the law’ of copyright then stood, I had abso-
lutely no remedy. ... I might, perhaps, have fought the matter,
since Dickens knew perfectly well that I was in treaty with Rout-
ledge, Warne, & Routledge. But I was indignant and mortified to
the stage of disgust ; and so gave the whole thing up. . , . Time
hath its revenges, and mine came, in the matter of the Journey Due
North , and my other embargoed articles in Household Words , swiftly
and comically enough. Perhaps I err in calling it a revenge at all ;
for I never w r as vindictive ; I loved and admired Dickens with all
my heart ; and at this distance of time I feel convinced that having
had no experience of the Special Correspondent, w r ho in 1857 was
almost a novel personage, he failed to see that I had any claim to
travelling expenses. I had charged him none when I repeatedly
sent him articles from Paris, from the north of England, and from
Ireland. Why should I be paid, so he may have reasoned, for
travelling a couple of thousand milc3 ? . . . My reconciliation with
Dickens was due neither to the interposition of “ mutual friends ”
nor to the interchange of explanatory correspondence. It was
mainly due, I should say, to a certain leading article written by me
in the Daily Telegraph ; but what that leader was about is, at this
time of day, absolutely of no importance. “ La vie,” writes Honor6
de Balzac, “ est impossible sans de grands oublis.” At all events,
Dickens took the embargo off the Journey Due North and my
remaining papers in Household Words ; and the deadlock was at
an end. This was in the summer of 1858 ; and I enjoyed the

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

203

renewed friendship of Dickens and worked for him in the columns
of All the Year Round until his death in 1870 . — S 2.

o. A. STOREY.

The first name that occurs to me in this recollective mood is one that
is a household word, one that is dear to every right-minded reader
of the English language — it is the name of Charles Dickens. Not
only was his Cricket on the Hearth one of the first books that I became
possessed of, but its author was the first great man whom I was
introduced to, and this is how it happened.

Some friend of the family had seen scribblings of mine on half-
sheets of notepaper which were considered wonderful, both by him
and the family. This friend, Mr. Stultz, a rich, prosperous man,
who had made a fortune by tailoring, was building some almshouses
in Kentish Town for the sheltering of a certain number of the
less successful of his calling, and it was only right and proper that
a bust of the kind founder should be put up as a memorial of his
charity. To this end, he was sitting to Behnes, the sculptor, in
Osnaburgh Street, and it struck him that an introduction to that
gentleman might be a means of bringing out the latent talent of
little Adolphus, who was then nine years old. I remember he took
mo with him in his carriage and introduced me into the strangest
of strange places, as it seemed to me then, a sculptor’s studio. . . .
Mr. Behnes, the presiding genius of the place, received me very
kindly — said I could go there whenever I liked to draw from the
casts or make models from them. Ho gave me buns to eat, and a
groat lump of clay, which I was to fashion into a horse’s head, or,
if I preferred, I could turn it into the enormous toes of the Farnese
Hercules.

One day, as I was engaged in the latter effort, a bright, lively
young man, good looking, and with dark flowing locks, entered the
studio, accompanied by Behnes, and took his seat in a comfortable
arm-chair on a revolving platform. He, too, seemed amused at
the scene — and very much so when he caught sight of a small boy
sit ting in front of a foot almost as big as himself, with a bun on one
side, and a large lump of clay on the other, which he w as trying to
thumb into shape. I was the little boy, and the lively young man
with dark flowing locks was Charles Dickens. He came and looked
over me, patted mo on the head, and said some kind things, but I did
not know who he w r as till afterwards.

The sitting over, ho took his departure, accompanied by Behnes,
but they were no sooner gone than the men in blouses, with shades
over their eyes, came stealthily in to see the master’s w r ork and to
criticise the clay features and the clay curls of the great novelist.
And then they came up to me and asked mo all about him and wiiat he
had talked about, and said, “ Don’t you know who he is ? ” And
then they told me that he was the author of Pickwick , and Nicholas
NicUehy , and Oliver Twist , and Sketches by Boz , and Master Humph-
rey's Clock , etc. ; and I was delighted, for I had copied the portrait
of Mr. Pickwick, and Mr. Weller with his pipe, and Bam, and others.

204

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

and it was through these very copies, which had been considered
so wonderful, that I found myself in Behnes’ studio, beginning
almost in play an art career, which I had no idea then would have
developed into a reality.

Although I cannot remember what Charles Dickens said to me,
I can remember that during the sitting he was very animated and
talkative, and spoke of an accident he had been in, and that a wheel
was within two inches of his head as he lay on the ground, but
that he escaped uninjured.

Here, then, was the bust in embryo of Charles Dickens, for it
was all lumps and finger holes ; and just behind it was the bust of
Mr. Stultz. . . . And where are the other busts I have mentioned ?
Does anyone know anything about the one of Dickens ? — S 5.

MRS. TROLLOPE.

In the March of 1838 Mrs. Trollope for the first time met Charles
Dickens, for whose genius she always had a high admiration. In
the letter mentioning this circumstance, she uses a phrase which
shows how Pickivick had already furnished many words and sayings
that had entered into our common parlance.

“Cecilia, Irene, and I passed the soiree (I don’t mean that we
passed by, or in any way neglected, a leg of mutton !) on Thursday
with Mrs. Bartley, where we met ‘ Bo/.,’ who desired to be presented
to me. I had a good deal of talk with him. He is extremely lively
and intelligent, has the appearance of being very young, and although
called excessively shy, seemed not at all averse from conversation.”

Perhaps I may be forgiven for suggesting that he found her also
“ lively and intelligent”; and that nothing so readily overcomes
shyness, as the sense that your interlocutor is a genuine person,
speaking sincerely the thought that is in him. The least suspicion
of humbug, or of a sneer, makes shyness retire into itself and stay
there. — Frances Eleanor Trollope, in Frances Trollope.

SAMUEL CARTER HALL.

I first knew Charles Dickens in the year 182(3, when no “ shadow
before ” had heralded the “ coining ” of fame. It seems but
yesterday — though it is more than half a century ago- since I first
saw him, then a handsome lad, gleaning intelligence in the byways
of the metropolis — taking in rapidly that he might, thereafter,
lavishly give out. From his boyhood he had to provide for himself ;
from the age of thirteen years it was his happy lot not to abstract
from, but to augment, the income that supported his home. On
both sides, his family lived by severe, though honourable toil —
the toil of the better classes, however, for Charles Dickens was bom
a gentleman ; and if, until an after period, he was not rich, there
is no one of his “ kith and kin ” who cannot, to some extent, give
the why and wherefore that it was so. He was never one who
thought so much of his public as to neglect his private duties ; but
his generosities were by nb means so limited : if with him charity
began at home, assuredly it did not end there.

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

205

Yes, it seems but yesterday, at his then residence in Doughty
Street, we were present at the christening of his first-born child ! . . .
His many works have delighted, and — what is of far greater moment
— instructed, millions ; and the impress he has left on the page of
literary history will endure for centuries to come — as long as the
language in which his books are written : a language that is now
read and spoken by hundreds of millions, and which probably will
be, at no very distant period, the common tongue of the half of
humankind.

The death — if the term must be applied to one w r ho can never
die — of this largely gifted and largo hearted man carried deep grief
into every circle, not alone of the kingdom, but of the world : the
highest and the lowest of society alike felt that they had lost a friend
— one who not only ministered, and always rightly, to their in-
tellectual enjoyments, but was ever the firm yet genial advocate
of Humanity. His sympathies were mainly, but by no means
exclusively, with the humbler classes ; he was ever on the side of
all who suffered wrong — ever the em my of those by whom it was
inflicted. His satire — and he was often a keen satirist — was never
personal, either as regarded himself or the vices and follies he
assailed : of him may be truly said what the poet said of Sheridan —
in k ‘ the combat ” his wit

“ Xe'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.”

And it is no exaggeration to apply to Charles Dickens the line that
was applied to William Shakespeare —

“11c was not for an age, but for all time.” — II 1.

MISS LAURA HA IN ERISWELL.

My father was very fond of taking me out and about with him,
so that at a very early age l became acquainted with authors,
publishers, and printers. On one occasion we were walking down
Wellington Street, Strand, and just passing the ofhce of Household
Words , when a hansom cab stopped, and out stepped a gaily
dressed gentleman ; bis bright green waistcoat, vivid scarlet tie,
and pale lavender trousers would have been noticed by anyone,
but the size of the nosegay in his buttonhole riveted my attention,
for it was a regular flower garden. My father stopped and intro-
duced me, and I, who had only seen engravings of the Maclise
portrait, and a very handsome head in my mother’s photograph
album, was astonished to lind myself shaking hands with the great
novelist, Charles Dickens. His manner was so exceedingly pleasant
and kind to a young nobody like me that 1 was very much taken with
him ; and I was moreover verv anxious to like the man who had
created Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, and Little Nell and her
grandfather.

When I was ill — and in those days I was very, very often laid up
and confined to my bed — 1 used to read* or got my mother to read
to me, The Old Curiosity Shop, My grandmother hod a first edition

206

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

of the book, and I read it till I almost knew it by heart. I admired
Dick Swiveller very much, disliked Sampson Brass and his sister,
hated Quilp, pitied the Marchioness, and adored Little Nell and her
grandfather. My father told Dickens something of this, and the
great novelist smiled, and said, “ She is not unlike Little Nell,
herself.”

I felt this was the very greatest compliment anyone could pay me,
for if there was one person I wished to resemble, it was Little Nell.
She was such a very good girl. I felt I could never be like her,
however much I tried. The fact was, I only thought of her when I
was ill, and forgot my good resolutions when I was up and about ;
I was half a mind to confess this to Mr. Dickens, but instead I looked
up and blushed with pleasure, and he smiled very kindly as he
again shook hands. I turned away in a great state of elation, but
my father I am sure had not appreciated the compliment, for lie
said one or two rather uncomplimentary things about Little Nell.
I fancy he thought I should grow morbid, and he told me that when
I was older and had read some of Mr. Dickens’s other novels I should
no longer admire The Old Curiosity Shop so much — “ parts of it are
inimitable, but Little Nell is unnatural and too sentimental,” he
said emphatically, “ and when you are older you will see it.” This
was of course true ; but my ardour was very much damped, and 1
soon ceased to wish to be like Little Nell.

The next time I .saw Dickens was about a year after, at a farewell
dinner given to him by many of the best-known men of the day,
on the occasion of his second visit to America.

The hall was quite new, and might have been built for the occasion.
The half-moons arching the twenty mural compartments contained, in
letters of gold, the names of all Dickens’s novels, Pickwick being the
one selected for the place of honour at the end of the room behind
the President’s chair. Below it were the initials C. IX, surrounded
by a wreath, and beneath that another scroll, bearing the words,
All the Year Round . The English and American flags indicated the
international character of the entertainment.

The band suddenly ceased, and Charles Dickens entered, accom-
panied by Lord Lytton, who was President ; as they passed down
the room, followed by Sir Francis Grant, President of the Royal
Academy, Sir Charles Russell, Lord Houghton, and several others,
the whole room rose and broke into loud and continuous applause,
which lasted till they had taken their places.

We had a very good view of Dickens, and I can see him now, stand-
ing smiling and bowing, a flush upon his face. I even fancy I can
hear, in this quiet room, the echo of that wonderful applause — and
yet how many, many years it is ago, and how very few of all that
brilliant company there are left ! Dickens looked very well and
very much moved and gratified. As he was in evening dress, he
could not indulge his taste for colour ; but my eyes flew to his
buttonhole — it was a camellia, surrounded by a ring of violets;
I wished some little bird had whispered to him to have chosen
either one or the other.

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

207

We ladies went into a room, and had a cold supper, or collation,
as it was called ; then we returned to the gallery in time for the
speeches, and when we returned the band had gone. The toast of
the evening : “A Prosperous Voyage and Long Life to our Illus-
trious Guest and Countryman, Charles Dickens ! ” was drunk with
all honours, and one cheer more ; and Dickens must have been
more than human if he could have looked round and not have been
thrilled and stirred by the presence, and not only the presence, but
the enthusiasm, of so many brother artists. But Dickens is very
human in his writings, and was in himself, for his eyes filled and his
voice trembled and shook, and I clasped my hands and was so
excited, I could have cried if I had not been determined to hear and
see all I could. — F 5.

GEORGE CRUIKSIIANK.

In those days, and down to those days (1846 or 1847) Cruikshank
was convivial — sometimes to excess. It was not for nothing that
Maclise had drawn him seated upon a beer barrel. . . . Later,
when Dickens knew him, lie would fall away occasionally from his
new and more dignified friends (who were not ascetics), and run
a wild career for a night in his old haunts. Dickens used to describe
one wonderful day — among others — he had passed with “ the
inimitable George.’'

Dickens was living in Devonshire Place, and was just setting
to work ono morning in his library, when Cruikshank, unwashed
and “ smelling of tobacco, beer, and sawdust,” as Dickens described
him, burst into the room. He said he had been up all night ;
he was afraid to go home, and begged for some breakfast. While
he was breakfasting, Dickens did his utmost to persuade him to go
to bed. But George resolutely set his face against it. He said he
dared not even think of Lslington. Seeing the state of affairs,
Dickens closed his desk, and proposed to accompany his friend
to face the domestic storm with him. But Cruikshank would only
consent to a walk — the farther from Islington the better.

Dickens, under such circumstances, was an admirable friend.
His cheery talk and wise counsel had great weight with Cruikshank ;
but each time ho artfully turned the truant’s face cast, he drew
back with a — “ No, no, Charley — not that way.”

And so they walked about the streets for hours, strolling in the
course of the day into the famous aviary of the Pantheon in Oxford"'
Street. Here Cruikshank came suddenly face to face with one of
Mrs. Cruikshank’s intimate friends. The scene which ensued,
Dickens used to say, was one exquisitely farcical. And the manner
in which ho set forth the episodes of the long day in the streets,
with Cruikshank’s droppings into various hostelries, and his final
dejected departure homewards, utterly worn out, and having
exhausted his faithful friend, was in his happiest vein. — J 4

In a whimsical account of an amateur strolling excursion, in
which Cruikshank was one of the company (1847), supposed to be

208

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

written by Mrs. Gamp, Dickens has vividly described the Illustrator
of Oliver Twist :

“ I do assure you, Mrs. Harris, when I stood in the railways
office that morning, with my bundle on my arm, and one patten
in my hand, you might have knocked me down with a feather,
far less porkmangers which was a-lumping against me, continual
and sewere all round. I was drove about like a brute animal and
almost worritted into fits, when a gentleman with a largo shirt-
collar, and a hook nose, and a eye like one of Mr. Sweedlepipe’s
hawks, and long locks of hair, and wiskers that I wouldn’t have
no lady as I was engaged to meet suddenly a- turning round a corner,
for any sum of money you could offer me, says, laughing, 4 Halloa,
Mrs. Gamp, what are you up to ? ’ I didn’t know him from a man
(except by his clothes) ; but I says faintly, 4 If you’re a Christian
man, show me where to get a second-class ticket for Man jester,
and have me put in a carriage, or I shall drop.’ Which he kindly
did, in a cheerful kind of w’ay, skipping about in the strangest manner
as ever I sec, making all kinds of actions, and looking and vinking
at me from under the brim of his hat (which w r as a good deal turned
up) to that extent, that I should have thought he meant something,
but for being so flurried as not to have no thoughts at all until I
was put in a carriage along with an individgle — the politest as
ever I sec — in a shepherd’s plaid suit with a long gold watch-guard
hanging round his neck, and his hand a-trembling through nervous-
ness w’orse than a aspian leaf.” Presently they fell into conversa-
tion.

44 4 P’raps,’ he says, 4 if you're not of the party, you don’t know
who it was that assisted you into this carriage ? ’

“ 4 No, sir,’ I says, 4 1 don’t indeed.’

44 4 Why, ma’am,’ he says, a-wisperin’, 4 that was George, ma’am.’

44 4 What George, sir ? I don’t know no George,’ says I.

44 4 The great George, ma’am,’ says he. 4 The Crookshanks.’

44 If you’ll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turns my head, and see the
wery man a-making pictures of me on his thumb nail, at the winder !
While another of ’em — a tall, slim, melancolly gent, with dark hair,
and a bage vice — looks over his shoulder, with his head on one
side, as if he understood the subject, and cooly says, 4 I’ve draw r ’d
her several times — in Punch he says too ! The owdacious wretch ! ”

The melancholy gent with the “ bage vice ” was Leech . — J 4.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.

In the middle of June 1847, Andersen quitted Rotterdam for
London in the night- packet, Batavian. It is thus that ho describes
his first impression of the Thames :

44 Presently there were traces of the ebb-tide, the miry, slimy
bottom appeared near the banks ; I thought of Quilp in Dickens’s
4 Nelly and his (sic) Grandfather ’ ; I thought of Marryat’s sketches
of life by the river here. . . .”

At Lady Blessington’s, whither he was taken by his friend Jordan,
be met the man he most desired to see, Charles Dickens, whose

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

209

novels he knew well, and greatly admired. The meeting must
be told in Anderseh’s own words —

“ I was yesterday at Lady Blessing ton’s. . . . And can you
guess now who was my neighbour at table ? Wellington’s eldest
son ? Before we sat down to eat, Lady Blessington gave me the
English edition of Das Mitrchen meines Lebens , and bade me write
my name in it. Just as I was writing, a man came into the room,
just like the portrait we have all seen, a man who had come to
town for my sake, and had written, ‘ I must see Andersen ! ’ He
had no sooner saluted the company than I left the writing-desk,
and rushed towards him ; we took each other by the hand, looked
into each other’s eyes, and laughed for joy ; we knew each other so
well, although this was our first meeting — it was Charles Dickens.
He quite comes up to my highest expectation of what he would
be like. Outside the house is a pretty verandah which runs along
its whole length . . . here we stood for a long time and talked —
talked in English, but he understood me, and I him.”

Dickens talked, among other things, about “ The Little Mermaid,”
which Lady Dull Gordon had just translated in Bentley's Magazine ,
and praised “ A Poet’s Bazaar ” and “ The Improvisatore,” which
he had also read. Ife also drank Andersen’s health at table, and
the Marquis of Douro followed his example. Dickens came up to
London a second time on purpose to see Andersen, and on this
occasion brought him a beautifully bound edition of his works,
in every volume of which he had WTittcn, “ To Hans Christian
Andersen, from his friend and admirer, Charles Dickens.” — B L

Andersen paid a second five weeks’ visit to England in 1857,
during the whole of which time he was the guest of Dickens at Gad’s
Hill. At first, indeed, he had been very doubtful whether he should
accept Dickens's invitation.

“ There is one thing you will observe at once when we meet,”
he writes. “I talk English very badly, yes, even worse than when
I was in your family circle last time, for then I had been nearly
three months in England, but now 1 have not been there for ten years,
have no practice in speaking English at home, and shall come
straight from my Danish Fatherland over to you.” Finally, he
declared that he would not come to England at all, unless he were
sure of finding Dickens there. “ My visit is to you alone,” he says,
“ and unless 1 hear from you I shall go to Switzerland.”

But Dickens was not to be put oft’, and sent, by return of post*
a reply brimming over with, cordiality.

” I hope,” ho writes, “ that my answer will at once decide you
to make your summer visit to us. . . . We shall bo at a little
country house I have. . . . You shall have a pleasant room there with
a charming view, and shall live as quiet and wholesome as in Copen-
hagen itself. If you should want at any time you are with us to
pass the night in London, this house (Tavistock House) from the
roof to the cellar, will be at your disposal. ... So pray make up
your mind to come to England. We have children of all sizes, ana
they all love you. You will find yourself in a house full of admiring

210

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

and affectionate friends varying from three feet high to five feet
nine. Mind, you must not think any more of g6ing to Switzerland.
You must come to us.”

This letter removed Andersen’s last scruples. In the beginning
of June he appeared at Gad’s Hill Place, and was received literally
with open arms. Looking back upon this visit, he used to say
it was the happiest period of his life. He did not feel in the least
as if he were in a foreign land ; it was just like being at home, he
said. In a letter to the Queen Dowager of Denmark, he describes
Dickens as the most amiable man he had ever known, with a heart
* equal to his mind. Nay, with his usual affectionate exaggeration,
he was inclined to place Dickens above everyone in everything ;
declared seriously that he preferred his acting to the acting of
Ristori, and was very indignant when his host’s benevolent efforts
to raise a subscription for Douglas Jerrold’s widow were put down
to base or petty motives.

The Dickenses certainly did their very utmost to make his visit
a happy one, and throughout his stay he did exactly what he liked.

In the middle of July he quitted England, which he was never
to see again. His parting with the Dickens family was heartrending,
and he was so full of the memories of English hospitality that Paris,
whither he went next, seemed quite strange and dismal by contrast.
. . . Andersen always preserved a grateful recollection of Charles
Dickens (he sent a full account of his visit to Dickens to the
Bcrlinjske Tidende of Copenhagen, 18G0), and advertised his works
largely in Denmark; but the enthusiasm he felt for him in 1857
was too perfervid to last very long, and Dickens’s very natural
hesitation to forgather indiscriminately with all the Danes whom
he was in the habit of sending from time to time with letters of
introduction, seems at last to have somewdiat offended Andersen ;
anyhow, during the last fifteen years of his life we meet with no
mention whatever of Dickens in his correspondence . — B 1.

Dresden, during his (Hans C. Andersen’s) visit there, seems
to have been suffering from a plague of authoresses, “ who
swarmed in and out of the houses like so many flies ; ” . . .
one gifted lady talked learnedly to him about the resemblance
between the English and Danish languages ; and, by the time
she had finished, it became perfectly plain to him that she knew
very little about either. “ The difficulty about tho English is the
pronunciation,” she said in conclusion, “ for the words are written
one way and pronounced another, so that you* have no clue at
all. Thus you spell the name of the celebrated English novelist
D-i-c-k-e-n-s, but you pronounce it * B-o-z ’.” — B 1.

JULIUS MAYHEW.

Julius Mayhew possessed in an eminent degree the art of saying
ridiculous things with an unconscious air. ... On another occasion,
when among a few intimate friends (most of them writers), he had
been expressing his dislike of literature and its professors.

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

211

“ Can vou see nothing in Dickens to admire ? ” called out one of
them. ‘*Has Macaulay no attractions for you ? ”

“ I never met Dickens but once,” replied Julius, u and I thought
him very offensive. He did nothing but talk, and always about
himself. As for Caulay,” he added, “ I never till now heard of
him.” — H. Sutherland Edwards, in Personal Recollections .

JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY.

The only very distinguished literary person that I have seen of
late (March 1851) for the first time is Dickens. I met him last
week at a dinner at John Forster’s. I had never even seen him
before, for ho never goes now into fashionable company. He looks
about the age of Longfellow. His hair is not much grizzled and is
thick, although the crown of his head is getting bald. His features
are good, the nose rather high, the eyes largish, greyish, and very
expressive. He wears a moustache and beard, and dresses at dinner
in exactly the same uniform which every man in London or the
civilised world is bound to wear, as much as the inmates of a peni-
tentiary are restricted to theirs. I mention this because I had heard
that he was odd and extravagant in his costume. I liked him ex-
ceedingty. We sat next each other at table, and I found him genial,
sympathetic, agreeable, unaffected, with plenty of light, easy talk
and touch-and-go fun without any effort or humbug of any kind.
He spoke with great interest of many of his Boston friends, partic-
ularly of Longfellow, Wendell Holmes, Felton, Sumner, and Tom
Appleton . — C 5.

SIR JOSEPH CROWE.

Hunt and Wills were the two men of our newspaper set with whom
1 most consorted. To Wills I went with pleasure, because I partic-
ularly enjoyed the society of his wife, one of the most charming
.and excellent women whom I ever met, who never failed to keep her
friends attached to her, so full was she of kindness, archness, and
humour, made especially winning by a Scotch dryness, accompanied
by a delightful Scotch accent. At her house parties and balls were
often given, where all the literary celebrities of the day, except,
perhaps, Thackeray, were to be met. Here were to be seen the
Rowland Hills ; Mrs. Crowe, my namesake, authoress of the Night
Side of Nature ; Kenny Meadows, the illustrator of books ; the
genial and delightful John Leech of Punch , and a whole bevy of
ladies of the Chambers family, one of whom became Mrs. Lehmann,
another the grand and handsome wife of Dr. Priestley. Horace
Mayhew also enlivened these evenings with his jokes, which he sowed
broadcast, preparatory to selecting the best for Punch ; then came
Mark Lemon with his portly figure, Shirley Brooks, Albert Smith,
and Douglas Jerrold with his wife and sons, companions of Laman
Blanchard and myself, and last, not least, Charles Dickens with
his wife and her sister, Miss Hogarth . — G 0.

212

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

LORD DARNLEY.

The Lord Darnley of that day was a great friend of his, and was
ever eager to show his appreciation of his distinguished and interest-
ing neighbour ; and Dickens on his side, as I noted, relaxed the
sort of indifference he felt for what are called “ nobs ” — “ swells ”
and persons of title. There was no radical feeling in the matter,
but he always disdained being patronised or “ encouraged.” Lord
Darnley was ever kindly to him. He and his family used often to
dine at Cobham. As is well known, Fechter’s chalet, which used
» to stand on “ Boz’s ” little property across the road, was given by
the family to the Damleys, and it is now set up in their grounds. —
F 2.

BRET HARTE ' FRIEND WHOM HE NEVER SAW).

~scr '

Bret Hrettjtold me the little history of that ever-green poem
[“ Dicke r veuuamp ”], of how it was written on the day that the news
of the death of Dickens reached him at San Rafael, California, while
the last sheets of the July Overland , already edited by him, were
going to press. After stifling the emotion that he felt (for he dearly
loved his “ Boz ”), he hurriedly sent his first and only draft of the
verses, which were destined to live so long, to the office at San
Francisco. They were written in two or three hours, and at his
urgent request the publication of the magazine w'as held back until
they could appear.

On the day when, amidst “ a rain of tears and flowers ” — many
flowers brought by unknown hands, many tears shed from unknown
eyes — Charles Dickens was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, a
letter in his handwriting (the magic handwriting that brought and
still brings merriment and comfort to millions), addressed to Bret
Harte, was on its way across the Atlantic. It was a letter in his
usual hearty, breezy style, telling the young author how highly
he thought of his work, asking him to contribute to All the Year
Rcnind (of which he was then editor), and bidding him, when he
came to England, which he was “ certain soon to do,” to visit him
at his delightful home at Gad’s II ill — “ a spot with which you are no
doubt already familiar in connection with one William Shakespeare
and a certain Sir John Falstaff.”

Bret Harte’ s first visit to London was perforce a short one. There
he found his old friend Joaquin Miller, who concerning it made this
record :

“ He came to me in London late in the seventies, on his way to
the Consulate at Crefeld. ... He could not rest until he stood by
the grave of Dickens. But I drove him here and I drove him there
to see the living. The dead would keep. But at last, one twilight,
I led him by the hand to where some plain letters, in a broad, flat
stone, just below' the bust of Thackeray, read ‘ Charles Dickens.’

“ Bret Harte is dead now, and it will not hurt him in politics,
where they seem to want hard and heartless men for high places —
not hurt him in politics or in anything anywhere — to tell the plain

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

213

truth, how he tried to speak, but choked up, how tears ran down
and fell on the stone as he bowed his bare head very low ; how his
hand trembled as I led him away.”

Bret Harte was, indeed, a true believer in the genius of Charles
Dickens. His knowledge of his books was unrivalled, and he could
not only enjoy his humour, but appreciate to the utmost his pathos.
He could have passed Charles Calverley’s famous Pickwick Examina-
tion Paper with honours . — P I.

DISRAELI.

We spoke of Dickens. I mentioned that Dickens had told me
of his meeting Lord Beaeonsfield (then Mr. Disraeli) at dinner ; this
was only a few weeks before Dickens's death. I told Lord Beacons-
field that, in mentioning the circumstance to me, Dickens had said,
“ What a delightful man he is! What an extraordinary pity it is
that he should ever have given up literature for politics ! ” This,
as I expected, seemed to amuse Lord Beaeonsfield very much. He
said, “ I remember the occasion perfectly ; it was at Lord Stan-
hope’s. 1 was one day mentioning to him my regret at having seen
so little of Mr. Dickens, and he said, ‘ He is coming to dine here
next week ; come and meet him.’ I went, and sat next to
Dickens.”

Lord Beaeonsfield spoke of the charm of Dickens’s conversation,
his brightness, and his humour ; and I remarked I had always held
that Dickens was an exception to the general rule of authors being
so much less interesting than their books. — Y.

LANDSEER.

It happened that on one occasion when Landseer was engaged
to dine at my father’s house, ail the company had assembled in
the drawing-room with the exception of the painter. My father,
who had invited him earlier than his other guests knowing that
he would probably arrive the last of all, grew impatient ; but, drawing
out his watch, determined to wait for him another quarter of an
hour. After that time had elapsed, no Landseer appearing he
decided upon going downstairs with his friends, and dinner was
well-nigh half over before Landseer walked in. My father received
him rather coldly, thinking that his affectation was becoming
intolerable and deserved a slight punishment ; but my aunt, who
sat near to where Landseer was placed, noticed that he was very
pale and that his hands and face were twitching nervously. He
became more composed as the dinner proceeded, and after it was
over, took my father aside and told him that ho had left his studio
early enough to reach Devonshire Terrace in good time for dinner,
and was anxious to be in time, as he knew my father’s punctual
habits, but that, as his foot almost touched the doorstep of the
house, one of those terrible fits of nervousness and shyness to which
he was subject came upon him, and he was obliged to walk up and
down the street for a long time before he could summon up courage

214

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

to ring at the bell. I can imagine how the severity of my father’s
manner softened at this confession, and how eagerly and affection-
ately he must have assured his friend of his warm sympathy. —
Mrs. Kate Perugini, in the Magazine of Art , February 1903.

GEORGE DOLBY.

George Dolby, once Charles Dickens’s trusted secretary and
successful “ reading ” manager, died a few days ago in Fulham
Infirmary,- penniless and unkempt. Dolby’s career was remarkable.
• The Daily News gives an interesting sketch of the doings of Dolby
when he and Dickens were on tour in England and America —
Dickens reading his works to wildly enthusiastic audiences, Dolby
diverting into coffers the stream of gold which the readings produced.

“ The history of Dolby is the history of the readings. He was
always in difficulties. So fierce was the demand to hear the reader
that Dolby, not being Procrustes, could never accommodate the
hall to the public. But enthusiastic crowds used to fill them to
the roofs, and hundreds used to be turned away nightly. Their only
resource was to ‘ pitch into Dolby.’

“ ‘In Dublin,’ says Dickens, 4 people are besieging Dolby to put
chairs anywhere ; in doorways, on my platform, in any sort of hole
and comer. This was in Dublin. In Liverpool the police intimate
officially that three thousand peoplo were turned away — they
carried in the outer doors and pitched into Dolby.’

“ It was Dolby who used to administer to the distinguished
reader the oysters and champagne, and other fillips, between the
‘ acts ’ in the dressing-room. It was Dolby who used to amuse him
in the harassing railway journeys between the towns and cities.
It was Dolby who, bubbling over with joy, used to bring him the
evidence of his amazing popularity, as judged by the heavy bags
of money jingling in his hand. And sometimes Dolby used to come
with hair dishevelled and garments torn and tattered, after a fight
with an enraged and disappointed crowd/’

It was Dolby who fought the speculators in seats in America and
made £1300 a week for Dickens. Three-quarters of a mile of people
would wait outside Dolby’s office for tickets, and many of them
slept the night before on mattresses in the streets. Dolby was the
buffer between Dickens and his raving American friends. And it
was Dolby who watched over Dickens as if he were a child, “ as
tender as a woman and as watchful as a doctor.”

Dickens made £20,000 by the American tour, and the tour killed
him. Dolby’s share was £3000, and he died penniless through
drink . — Daily Mail , October 16, 1900.

A TOUCHING COMPLIMENT.

Of the personal esteem, the affection even, that was felt for Dickens
in his lifetime by people who were strangers to him, here is an anec-
dote told by his son, Mr. Henry Fielding Dickens, the distinguished
K.C. As readers of Forster’s biography know, Dickens used to

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

215

take an interest in the sports of the young men in the neighbour-
hood of his Kentish home, played cricket with them, and acted
as president of their club. As he was sitting in the tent one
afternoon keeping the score, a sergeant of the line came in and,
making a bow, said —

“ Is Mr. Charles Dickens here ? ”

“ Yes,” said Dickens, “ here I am.”

The soldier waited a moment and said, “ I ask your pardon,
sir, but may I look at you for a little while so as to get your features
in my mind ? ”

“ Oh, certainly,” replied Dickens; “I will go on with my score.”

The soldier waited a minute or two and then said, “ It would
be a great honour, sir, if I might shake your hand.”

“ There's my hand,” said Dickens, “ and all the luck in the world
to you.”

“ Good-bye, sir, and God bless you,” was the reply ; “I’m going
to India this week.”

Dickens said that no other compliment ever touched him as
that did. — R 2.

HIS WORK FOR HIS BROTHER AUTHORS.

On 20th July 1805, an event took place which was deeply in-
teresting to those connected with literature, namely, the opening
of what was called the Guild of Literature at Stevenage, near
Knebworth. It was the desire of the founders to erect a number
of houses, on sites presented by Sir Edward Lytton, -which might
either be given or let cheaply to authors. The opening day was
celebrated at Knebworth itself by a great luncheon. Many of
the guests were writers of mark. Mr. Charles Dickens was there
with his family and Mr. John Forster, editor of the Examiner , an
old and constant friend both of Sir Edward Lytton and of his son.
There were many of Sir Edward Lytton’ s acquaintances present,
literary as well as others. Mr. Dickens made a remarkable speech
which created a great impression. — Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Drummond
Wolff, in Rambling Recollections,

GUILD OF LITERATURE AND ART.

Forster has told us how the Guild of Literature and Art took
shape out of a scheme for benefiting two authors in distressed
circumstances by giving a number of amateur performances at
different provincial centres. That unfortunate Guild of Literature
and Art ! What a text it would make for a sermon on the vanity
of human wishes ! It was, Dickens declared, to change the status
of the literary man in England, and to make a revolution in his
position which no Government could affect. In the present year
of grace it is as though the Guild had never had a corporate or any
other existence, but all honour to the great man of letters who worked
so nobly in establishing it ! Dickens slaved for it as few men
ever slaved in a good cause, and communicated his enthusiasm to

216

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

others. It was only seven years ago that the Guild was dissolved and
its remaining property divided between the Literary Fund and the
Artists’ Benevolent Institution, but the conviction was early forced
upon its promoters that it was a failure. Needy literary men we
have always with us, but they will not bury themselves in a little
out-of«4he-way place in Hertfordshire. A genuine applicant with
unimpeachable testimonials would have been taken to the bosom
of the Guild and feted as never prodigal was feted in this world.
But he was not to be found . — R 2.

* byron’s flute.

It is by no means easy to think of any possible combination of
circumstances which should link Lord Byron and Charles Dickens
with the late George Manville Fenn. But there is such a link in
existence, and one of a very interesting character. Among the
curiosities treasured up for years by Mr. Fenn is a letter in Dickens’s
autograph upon a sheet of old-fashioned, blue, wire-woven note-
paper. It remained for years before Mr. Fenn received it upon
the bill- file of the tradesman to whom it was sent, w r ith the result
that it is pierced by three rough holes where the wore passed through
the original folds of the time-stained paper. The letter relates to
Lord Byron’s flute.

Dated in the older novelist’s characteristic way, “ Devonshire
Terrace, Twentieth June, 1848,” the document reads :

“ Mr. Charles Dickens is much obliged to Mr. Claridge for the offer
of Lord Byron’s flute. But, as Mr. Dickens cannot play that
instrument himself, and has nobody in his house who can, he begs
to decline the purchase, w ith thanks.”

As Mr. Fenn used to say, in showing the relic to his friends,
“ You cannot see a smile upon the paper, but there seems to be
one playing among the words.” One thinks of the melancholy
young gentleman at Todgers’s and the flute serenade, and of Dick
Swiveller’s mournful nocturnal performances on tho same instru-
ment when Sophy Wackles had been lost to him for ever. — West-
minster Gazette , September 6, 1900.

MEMENTOES.

Some interesting mementoes of the late diaries Dickens were
to be seen, in August 1909, at the New Dudley Gallery, at the
third annual Dickens Exhibition. One of the most notable
additions was the gun used by the novelist on the somewhat rare
occasions w T hen he went shooting. No doubt can be entertained
as to the authenticity of tho weapon, for it bears his name on the
butt, together with that of his biographer, Mr. John Forster, who
presented it to him. Thero is no special feature about it, beyond its
connection with Dickens, but that will be quite sufficient attraction
for the admirers of the great novelist.

Among the other relics was a very rare and finely preserved copy
of Master Humphrey's Clock , in its original binding, lent by Mr.

AMONG HIS FRIENDS.

217

Frank T. Sabin. The copy acquires additional interest from the
fact that it was presented by the author to Mr, J. P. Harley, who
acted in the character of “ The Strange Gentleman.” From Mr.
Harley the volume passed into the possession of the late Mr. J. L.
Toole, whoso name it also bears.

Another interesting volume was a copy of Bleak House, containing
a presentation inscription in the handwriting of Dickens, by Avhom
it was given to his friend Emile do la Rue. With it there is a long
autograph letter, referring to the curiously opposite subjects of the
war in the Crimea and spirit rapping. There was also a set of
diamond, pearl, and turquoise studs, upon the back of each of which
is engraved “ C. D. to F. B.,” the set having been presented to
Mr. Francesco Berger, as a memento of the performance of The
Frozen Deep , for which Mr. Berger composed the music . — Daily
Chronicle , August 9, 1909.

AS A SOCIAL REFORMER

mr. Fitzgerald’s summing-up.

Let us now see in detail the reforms and ameliorations for which
his countrymen are so indebted to Dickens. By his Pickwick
and Little Dorrit he succeeded in abolishing the dreadful horrors
and oppression of Imprisonment for Debt. Within a few years
the prisons were closed, and the Fleet Prison levelled to the ground.
I myself have given lectures to the Dickens Fellowship in the great
Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, which is built on the site, and
it was a strange feeling to walk on the ground where Mr. Pickwick
had walked.

The Yorkshire ScnooLS — his pictures of these institutions
for “ boy-farming ” were so vividly and appallingly described in
NicHeby that their destruction followed almost at once.

The Workhouse System branded and reformed by his Oliver
Twist .

The life of the Criminal Class exposed to view in the same story,
with a plea for indulgence to the wretched Nancys and others who
were associated with that life.

The Hypocrite and his methods exposed in Cliuzzlewit as well as
the nefarious system of company swindling.

Religious Fanaticism made odious in Burnaby Budge and in the
portraits of Stiggins, Chadband, Honeythunder, and others.

The low-class “ shark ” Solicitor held up in The Old Curiosity
Shop.

The terrible Law’s Delay shown with scathing satire in Bleak
House.

Money-Lenders and their grinding tyranny were exhibited
in Nicldeby and Our Mutual Friend.

The system of the Public Offices devised to flout and baffle all
inquiries and complaints was lashed in Little Dorrit under the form
of “ Circumlocution.”

Strikes and their abuses, with the unfeeling tyranny of the
masters, exhibited in Hard Times,

The Patent Laws exposed. Also the pedantic system of
School Teaching. Workhouse Oppression with the abuse of
“ settlement ” were dealt with in Our Mutual Friend .

218

AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

219

Also the hardships on the poor of the existing Marriage Law.

Tyranny of Magistrates and Judges help up to scorn and
reprobation in The Chimes , Oliver Twisty and Pickwick ; and the
treatment of the miserable Street Waif exposed in the most
powerful fashion by the example of Joe in Bleak House and of the
boy in The Haunted Man. Besides many more instances of a
trifling kind, but used with potent effect. In all these cases there
was no “ missing fire.” The stroke told at once ; the remedy
followed . — F 2.

I regard Dickens as the greatest social reformer in England I have
ever known outside polities. His works have tended to revolu-
tionise for the better our law courts, our prisons, our hospitals, our
schools, our workhouses, our government offices, etc. He was a
fearless exposer of cant in every direction — religious, social, and
political. — M 2.

ON PUBLIC EXECUTIONS.

In November 1850 Dickens witnessed the execution of Mrs.
Manning at Horsemonger Lane Gaol. . . . The whole scene, in-
expressibly odious and ghastly in its details, impressed him so
strongly by its absolute offensiveness that he was induced to offer,
in a letter to the Tiincs, his opinions respecting public executions
and their demoralising effect upon the minds of callous observers.
“ I am solemnly convinced,” he said, “ that nothing that ingenuity
could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time,
could work such ruin as one public execution, and I stand astounded
and appalled by the wickedness it exhibits.” He wrote a second
letter suggesting that executions should be carried out inside the
prison walls, and these suggestions have been adopted almost
exactly as prescribed — an improved condition of affairs with the
initiation of which Dickens may justly be credited. — K 1.

AN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMER.

At the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 27th June 1855, Dickens
spoke on behalf of the Administrative Reform Association which
was started after the Crimean disclosures. In the course of his speech
he said : “In my sphere of action I have tried to understand the
heavier social grievances, and to help to set them right. When the
Times newspaper proved its then almost incredible case in reference
to the ghastly absurdity of that vast labyrinth of misplaced
men and misdirected things, which had made England unable to
find on the face of the earth an enemy one-twentieth part as

E otent to effect the misery and ruin of her noble defenders as she
as been herself, I believe that the gloomy silence into which the
country fell was by far the darkest aspect in which a, great people
had been exhibited for many years. With shame and indignation
lowering among all classes of society, and this new element of dis-
cord piled on the heaving basis of ignorance, poverty, and crime,
which is always below us — with little adequate expression of the

220

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

f eneral mind, or apparent understanding of the general mind, in
Parliament — with the machinery of Government and the legislature
going round and round, and the people fallen from it and standing
aloof, as if they left it to its last remaining function of destroying
itself, when it had achieved the destruction of so much that was
dear to them — I did and do believe that the only wholesome turn
affairs so menacing could possibly take, was the awaking of the
people, the outspeaking of the people, the uniting of the people in
all patriotism and loyalty to effect a great peaceful constitutional
change in the administration of their own affairs. I think we may
reasonably remark that all obstinate adherence to rubbish W'hich
the time has long outlived, is certain to have in the soul of it more
or less that is pernicious and destructive ; and that will some day
set fire to something or other ; which, if given boldly to the winds,
w r ould have been harmless ; but which, obstinately retained, is
ruinous. I believe myself that when Administrative Reform goes
up it will be idle to hope to put it down, on this or that particular
instance. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress
is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable
for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we
are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established
as the sun, moon, and stars. In this old country, with its seething
hard-worked millions, its heavy taxes, its swarms of ignorant, its
crowds of poor, and its crowds of wicked, woe the day when the
dangerous man shall find a day for himself, because the head of the
Government failed in his duty in not anticipating it by a brighter
and a better one ! ” — S 1.

A SOCIAL REFORMER.

At Birmingham, on the 30th December 1853, Dickens read the
Christmas Carol to a large assemblage of work-people, for w hom,
at his special request, the major part of the vast edifice was reserved.
Before commencing the tale, Mr. Dickens said : “ If there ever was a
time when any class could of itself do much for its own good, and for
the welfare of society — which I greatly doubt — that time is tm-
questionably past. It is in the fusion of different classes, without
confusion ; in the bringing together of employers and employed ;
in the creating of a better common understanding among those
whose interests are identical, who depend upon each other, wdio
are vitally essential to each other, and who can never be in un-
natural antagonism without deplorable results, that one of the chief
principles of a Mechanics’ Institution should consist. In this world a
great deal of the bitterness among us arises from an imperfect under-
standing of one another. Erect in Birmingham a great Educational
Institution, properly educational ; educational of the feelings os well
as of the reason ; to which all orders of Birmingham men contri-
bute ; in which all orders of Birmingham men meet ; wherein all
orders of Birmingham men are faithfully represented — and you will
erect a Temple of Concord here which will be a model edifice tathe
whole of England.” — S 1.

AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

221

Social Reform also formed the subject of a speech by Dickens
on 10th May 1851 at a dinner of the Metropolitan Sanitary Associa-
tion. “ There are,” he observed, “ very few words for me to say
upon tho needfulness of sanitary reform, or the consequent useful-
ness of the Board of Health. That no man can estimate the amount
of mischief grown in dirt, that no man can say the evil stops here
or stops there, either in its moral or physical effects, or can deny that
it begins in the cradle and is not at rest in the miserable grave, is
as certain as it is that the air from Gin Lane will be carried by an
easterly wind into Mayfair, or that the furious pestilence raging
in St. Giles’s no mortal list of lady patronesses can keep out of
Almack’s. Fifteen years ago some of the valuable reports of Mr.
Chadwick and Dr. South wood Smith, strengthening and much
enlarging my knowledge, made me earnest in this cause in my own
sphere ; and I can honestly declare that the use I have since that
time made of my eyes and nose have only strengthened the conviction
that certain sanitary reforms must precede all other social remedies,
and that neither education nor religion can do anything useful until
the way has been paved for their ministrations by cleanliness and
decency .” — S 1.

DEFENCE OF THE WEAK.

The thought of any injustice done by the strong to the weak
made, if we may borrow the words of Macaulay as applied to Burke,
the blood of Charles Dickens boil in his veins. There was nothing
•wild about his philanthropy or his political opinions. He was not
for rushing to extremes. He was not even for too much of de-
monstration with band and banner, and what Carlyle called “ hip-
hip-hip and three cheers.” He was too earnest and too energetic
to be satisfied with tho mere sweetness and light of Matthew Arnold,
but he was an eager champion of the genuine and authentic rights
of his fellow-man. Ilis teachers, as Ebenezer Elliott, the poet,
said of himself, were “ tho torn heart's wail — the tyrant and the
slave ; the street, the factory, the jail ; the palace, and the grave.”
But,* like Ebenezer Elliott, too, his mind and his common sense
revolted against extravagance, because lie could see that extrava-
gance only leads to reaction and revulsion . — Daily News , January
21, 1890.

His letters to the Daily News under the title of u Crime
and Education,” furnish a striking instance of tho youthful
novelist’s enthusiasm for social reform. His views, it appears,
on these subjects were too bold and liberal for the Edinburgh
Review , which stately organ in 1843 declined his offer to contribute
an article on Ragged Schools. His impassioned condemnation of
Capital punishment [see Daily News, March 9, 13, and 16, 1846] and
vigorous description of tho degradation and the horror of a public
execution, together with his scarce little pamphlet against
Sabbatarian fanaticism are further examples. Even a notice
written by him of a remarkable American Panorama exhibited at

222

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, affords him an opportunity for
urging the claims of the poor ; it ends with the words :

“ It would be well to have a panorama, three miles long, of
England. There might be places in it worth looking at, a little
closer than we see them now ; and worth the thinking of, a little
more profoundly. It would be hopeful, too, to see some things in
England, part and parcel of a moving panorama : and not of one
that stood still, or had a disposition to go backward.” — Daily Neivs,
February 14, 1898.

THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF CHARITY.

I suppose most readers of popular fiction form an idea — erroneous
sometimes, no doubt — of the author's private character. In
Dickens’s writings, sympathy with the suffering is in such over-
whelming evidence, that it would be strange indeed if the mainspring
were not to be found in the writer’s own nature, and it would also
be strange if attempts were not made to take advantage of such
evident kindness of heart in furtherance of unworthy objects.
Dickens has told of some of those attacks upon the heart and purse
in print, and with the delightful humour peculiar to him ; but he
has not told — because it was not for him to tell — of any of the
instances in which he has stretched out a helping hand to real dis-
tress. I venture to present my readers with a single illustration,
in which Dickens and I “ w ent partners,” as we used to say at school,
and appropriately, as those benefited w ere the wife and children of
an artist. In the letter which follows, I have only suppressed
names :

“ Thus the case stands : if anybody sends money to Mrs- ,

I know no more of it ; neither does anybody else. But if anybody

sends money for the family’s benefit to the fund at , I

can answer for the moneys being forthcoming, simply because
I have made the account payable to my draft only. Of course I
have done this as a temporary measure, and I have from the first
taken it for granted that you and the third gentleman, whose name
I forget (but it was attached to the prospectus with our names),
will accept the administration of the money with mo, or with any
others whom we may join with us. There is the account open

at , and Mrs. has no power over it ; consequently, the

object of the subscribers cannot be abused. — F 7.

A FRIEND OF THE SLUM CHILD.

The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, was founded
on a small scale by Charles Dickens and a few others fifty-eight years
ago, and was the first hospital ever established in this country for
children. It has been well called “ The Mother of Children’s
Hospitals,” and has been the model for all other similar institutions.
Here is an extract from Dickens’s speech at the anniversary dinner
on 9th February 1858. After some reference to the spoilt children
of the richer classes he went on to say :

AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

223

“ The spoilt children whom I must show you are the spoilt children
of the poor in this great city. The two grim nurses. Poverty and
Sickness, who bring these children before you, preside over their
births, rock their wretched cradles, nail down their little coffins,
pile up the earth above their graves. Of the annual deaths in this
great town, their unnatural deaths form more than one-third. I
should not ask you, according to the custom as to the other class —
I should not ask you on behalf of these children to observe how good
they are, how pretty they are, how clever they are, how promising
they are, whose beauty they most resemble — I should only ask you
to observe how weak they are, and how like death they are ! And
1 should ask you, by the remembrance of everything that lies
between your own infancy and that so miscalled second childhood
when the child’s graces are gone, and nothing but its helplessness
remains ; I should ask you to turn your thoughts to these spoilt
children in the sacred names of Pity and Compassion. Within
a quarter of a mile of this place where I speak, stands a courtly
old house, where once, no doubt, blooming children were born,
and grew up to be men and women, and married, and brought
their own blooming children back to patter up the old oak stair-
case which stood but the other day, and to wonder at the old oak
carvings on the chimneypieces. In the airy wards into which the
old state drawing-rooms and family bedchambers of that house
are now converted are such little patients that the attendant nurses
look like reclaimed good giantesses, and the kind medical practitioner
like an amiable Christian ogre. Grouped about the little low tables
in the centre of the rooms are such tiny convalescents that they
seem to be playing at having been ill. On the dolls’ beds are such
diminutive creatures that each poor sufferer is supplied with its
tray of toys ; and, looking round, you may see how the little, tired,
Hushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on its wav into
the ark ; or liow r ono little dimpled arm has mowed down (as I saw'
myself) the whole tin soldiery of Europe. On the walls of these
rooms are graceful, pleasant, bright, childish pictures. At the
beds’ heads are pictures of the figure which is the universal embodi-
ment of all mercy and compassion, the ligure of Him who w as once
a child Himself, and a poor ono. Besides these little creatures on
the bods, you may learn in that place that the number of small
out-patients brought to that house for relief is no fewer than ten
thousand in the compass of ono single year. This is the pathetic
case which I have to put to you ; not only on behalf of the thousands
of children who annually dio in this great city, but also on behalf
of the thousands of children who live half-developed, racked with
preventible pain, shorn of their natural capacity for health and
enjoyment. If these innocent creatures cannot move you for them-
selves, how can I possibly hope to move you in their name ? The
most delightful paper, the most charming essay, w hich the tender
imagination of Charles Lamb conceived, represents him as sitting
by his fireside on a winter night telling stories to his own dear
children and delighting in their society, until he suddenly comes to

224

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

his old, solitary, bachelor self, and finds that they are but dream-
children who might have been, but never were. 4 We are nothing,*
they say to him, 4 less than nothing, and dreams. We are only
what might have been, and wo must wait upon the tedious shore of
Lethe, millions of ages, before we have existence and a name.’
< And immediately awaking,’ he says, 4 1 found myself in my arm-
chair.* The dream-children whom I would now raise, if I could,
before every one of you, according to your various circumstances,
should be the dear child you love, the dearer child you have lost,
the child you might have had, the child you certainly, have been.
Each of these dream-children should hold in its powerful hand one
of the little children now lying in the Children’s Hospital, or now
shut out of it to perish. Each of these dream-children should say
to you, 4 Oh, help this little suppliant in my name ; oh, help it for
my sake ! * Well ! — And immediately awaking, you should find
yourself in the Freemasons 5 Hall, happily arrived at the end of a
rather long speech, drinking 4 Prosperity to the Hospital for Sick
Children,’ and thoroughly resolved that it should flourish .” — S 1.

AS EDUCATIONAL REFORMER.

Mr. J. L. Hughes, inspector of public schools in Toronto, writes
in the February Century on 44 What Charles Dickens did for Chil-
dren : His work in Education.” He begins by declaring, 44 Froebel
and Dickens are the best interpreters of Christ’s ideals of childhood.
The philosophy of FroebeJ and the stories of Dickens are in perfect
harmony,” Dickens 44 was the greatest destructive educational
critic, but he was also a most advanced, positive, constructive
educator. There is no great ideal of the 4 new education ’ which is
not revealed by Dickens in his novels or his miscellaneous writings.”
He was, it seems, 44 the first Englishman of note to advocate the
kindergarten.” This he did in Household Words , July 1855. In
his writings generally — 44 every element of purity and strength in
the new education is revealed. The reverent sympathy for child-
hood ; the spirit of true motherhood ; the full recognition of self-
hood; the influence of nature in revealing conceptions of life,
evolution, and God ; the development of body, mind, and spirit
through play ; the need of training the entire being as a unity ;
the culture of originative and executive power ; the necessity for
perfect freedom in order to attain full growth ; and the fundamental
process of creative self-activity — all were clear to tho great absorp-
tive and reproductive mind of Dickens.” He aroused the world m
two ways : he pictured both the bad and the good ways of training.
Squeers, Dr. Blimber, Gradgrind, and Mr. Creakle were examples
of the wrong methods ; Dr. Strong, in David Copperficld , was “ a
type of every high modern ideal of education.” No man could
have written Hard Times who was not an advanced and thought-
ful educator. Mr. Hughes concludes by asking — 44 Did Dickens
deliberately aim to improve educational systems and reveal the
principles of educational philosophy ? Tho answer is easily found.
He was the first great English student of Froebel. He deals with

AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

225

nineteen different schools in his books. He gives more attention
to the training of childhood than any other novelist, or any other
educator except Froebel. He was one of the first Englishmen to
demand national control of education, even in private schools,
and the thorough training of all teachers. He exposed fourteen
types of coercion, and did more than anyone else to lead Christian
men and women to treat children humanely. Every book he wrote
except two is rich in educational thought. He took the most
advanced position on every phase of modem educational thought,
except manual training. When he is thoroughly understood he
will be recognised as the Froebel of England .” — Review of Reviews ,
February 1899.

Presiding at the fourth anniversary dinner of the Warehousemen
and Clerks* Schools, on 5th November 1857, Dickens referred at
some length to schools in general. First of all he spoke of the
sorts of schools he did not like. He found them, on consideration,
to be rather numerous. lie proceeded to sketch the other sort of
school he did like.

“ It is,” he said, “ a school established by the members of an
industrious and useful order, which supplies the comforts and
graces of life at every familiar turning in the road of our existence ;
it is a school established by them for the orphan and necessitous
children of their own brethren and sisterhood ; it is a place giving
an education worthy of them — an education by them invented,
by them conducted, by them watched over ; it is a place of
education where, while the beautiful history of the Christian religion
is daily taught, and while the life of that Divine Teacher who Himself
took little children on His knees is daily studied, no sectarian ill-will
nor narrow human dogma is permitted to darken the face of the
clear heaven which they disclose. It is a children’s school, which
is at the same time no less a children’s home, a home not to be
confided to the care of cold or ignorant strangers, nor, by the nature
of its foundation, in the course of ages to pass into hands that have
as much natural right to deal with it as with the peaks of the highest
mountains or with the depths of the sea, but to be from generation
to generation administered by men living in precisely such homes
as those poor children have lost ; by men always bent upon making
that replacement such a home as their own dear children might
find a happy refuge in if they themselves were taken early away.
And I fearlessly ask you, is this a design which has any claim to
your sympathy ? Is this a sort of school which is deserving of your
support ? ” — 8 1.

In an address on 3rd December 1858, before the Institutional
Association of Lancashire and Cheshire, held in the Free-Trade
Hall at Manchester, Dickens dealt eloquently with the pursuit of
knowledge, not by men like himself, the business of whose life is
with writing and with books, but by men the business of whose
life is with tools and with machinery.

“ Of the advantages of knowledge, 1 have said, and I shall say,
8

226

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

nothing. Of the certainty with which the man who grasps it under
difficulties rises in his own respect and in usefulness to the com-
munity, I have said, and I shall say, nothing. In the city of Man-
chester, in the county of Lancaster, both of them remarkable for
self-taught men, that were superfluous indeed. For the same reason
I rigidly abstain from putting together any of the shattered frag-
ments of that poor clay image of a parrot, which was once always
saying, without knowing why, or what it meant, that knowledge
was a dangerous thing. Do not let us, in the midst of the visible
objects of nature, whose workings we can tell of in figures, surrounded
by machines that can be made to the thousandth part of an inch,
acquiring every day knowledge which can be proved upon a slate
or demonstrated by a microscope — do not let us, in the laudable
pursuit of the facts that surround us, neglect the fancy and the
imagination which equally surround us as a part of the great scheme.
Let the child have its fables ; let the man or woman into which it
changes, always remember those fables tenderly. Let numerous
graces and ornaments that cannot be weighed and measured, and
that seem at first sight idle enough, continue to have their places
about us, be wo never so wise. The hardest head may co-exist
with the softest heart. The union and just balance of those two
is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a blessing to man-
kind. Knowledge, as all followers of it must know, has a very
limited power indeed, when it informs the head alone ; but when
it informs the head and ’the heart too, it has a power over life and
death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe . ” — S 1.

A CORN LAW REFORMER.

About the time that the agitation against the Corn Laws was at
its height (14th January 1840) young Robinson was present at a
meeting held in the village of Bremhill, in Wiltshire, to protest
against the taxation of the people’s food. It was on a moonlight
night, for the working people could only meet after the day’s toil
was done, and young Robinson stood near a waggon under a tree,
facing a crowd of agricultural labourers, men and women. Bread
was fearfully dear and wages were frightfully low. The poor
fellows knew nothing of political economy, but they had heard
the cry of “ cheap bread,” and they braved their masters’ anger
and met round that tree to petition Parliament to let the corn ships
in the offing discharge their golden freight without a tax.

A poor woman stood up in the waggon and she said with intense
energy, “They say we be purtected. If we be purtected, we be
starved.” Her name was Lucy Simpkins. The woman’s words
and manner struck the young listener under the tree, and it occurred
to him that some account of the scene would be of interest. He
therefore posted a descriptive paragraph to the London Daily
News , which had recently been started under the editorship of
Charles Dickens. The paragraph duly appeared and attracted
the attention of Dickens, who thereupon wrote some stirring

AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

227

verses on the subject which appeared in the issue of that paper
for 14th February 1846 . — R 2.

[The verses will be found on page 82, under the heading of
“ Dickens as a Poet.”]

AGAINST SLAVERY.

Dickens was very strongly against slavery, and once, on his first
visit to America in 1842, a hard-looking, unprepossessing individual
ventured to remind him that it was not the interest of a man to
ill-use his slaves ; to which the novelist quietly replied “ that it was
not a man’s interest to get drunk, or to steal, or to game, or to
indulge in any other vice, but ho did indulge in it for all that. That
cruelty and the abuse of irresponsible power were two of the bad
passions of human nature, with the gratification of which, con-
siderations of interest or of ruin had nothing whatever to do ; and
that, while every candid man must admit that even a slave might
be happy enough with a good master, all human beings know that
bad masters, and masters who disgrac'd the form they bore, were
matters of experience and history, whose existence was as undis-
puted as that of the slaves themselves .” — K 1.

AGAINST “ STIGGTNSISM.”

A small brochure, entitled Sunday under Three Heads ; As it is :
As Sabbath Bills would make it : As it might be made , belongs to
this date [1836], and was written under the pseudonym of “ Timothy
Sparks,” with illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (“ Phiz ”). It
constituted a strong plea for the poor, with direct reference to a
Bill “ for the Better Observance of the Sabbath,” which the House
of Commons had then recently thrown out by a small majority.
Sir Andrew Agnew, M.P., brought about an agitation advocating
the enforcement of more rigid laws respecting Sunday observance,
and Dickens, believing that such legislation would press more
heavily on the poor than on the rich, pleaded for the encouragement
of excursions and other harmless amusements on the Sabbath,
as likely to counteract the tendency towards certain forms of
dissipation which plebeian Londoners might favour in the absence of
innocent recreation. Thanks to the National Sunday League and
kindred bodies, that which Dickens so warmly advocated in 1836
has been in a measure realised, such as the opening of museums
and picture-galleries on the Lord's Day. A copy of Sunday under
Three Heads (now exceedingly scarce) has realised as much as £15
by auction . — K 1.

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS

A GENERAL SURVEY.

The story of the homes and haunts of Charles Dickens begins
really at Gad’s Hill and ends there. The house was the most prom-
inent recollection of his early childhood. It is true that, bom at
Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, he left his birthplace when he
was two years old, and always said that he remembered it and
the nurse watching him through the kitchen window as he trotted
about the small front garden, but his recollections of boyhood were
more intimately associated w ith Chatham, Rochester, and London ;
and it w r as his wish that he might be buried in the little graveyard
under the wall of Rochester Castle, or rather Keep. There is a
brass tablet to his memory in Rochester Cathedral, winch reads :

Charles Dickens,

Bom at Portsmouth , 1th of February , 1812 .

Died at Gad's Hill Place , by Rochester , 9 th of June , 1870.

Buried in Westminster Abbey.

To connect his memory .with the scones in which his
earliest and latest years were passed, and with the
associations of Rochester Cathedral and its neighbour-
hood, which extended over all his life, this tablet, with
the sanction of the Dean and Chapter, is placed by his
executors.

The tablet is placed just under that of Richard Watts, a sixteenth-
century worthy w r ho established a house where “ six poor travellers,
not being rogues or proctors, may receive gratis for one night
lodging, entertainment, and four pence each.” Dickensians will
not need to be reminded of the association of this charity with the
Christmas number of Household Words for 1854, 44 The Seven Poor
Travellers.”

From Chatham the Dickens family went to Bayham Street,
Camden Town, thence to 4 Gower Street North, and a small tene-
ment in Johnson Street, Somers Town. These were the bitter days
of the blacking factory in the Strand, of the Marshalsea, Lant Street,
and Little College Street. When the cloud lifted there oame his

228

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS.

229

experiences in the attorney’s office, the grappling with shorthand
as a means of distinction, the reportership which he neld for two years
in Doctors’ Commons — the old ecclesiastical and probate court —
the Reporters’ Gallery at Westminster, the spare hours of self-
improvement in the Reading Room at the British Museum.

It has been already pointed out that as a newspaper reporter
Dickens travelled all over the country. A year ago there was still
to be seen at Bath the old screen which used to stand in the hall
of the White Hart Hotel at that place. It contained the rules and
regulations relating to passengers and luggage, and was dated 1st
September 1830. The coaches by which the passengers travelled
were owned by the firm of Moses Pickwick & Co., and it was thence
that Dickens took the name of his most famous book. A photo-
graph of the old screen was given in the Car , of 4th December 1907.

During the year preceding the production of the first number of
The Pickwick Papers , 1835, Dickens resided in Fumival’s Inn. And
it was at 15 Fumival’s Inn that, following his marriage to Miss
Hogarth on 2nd April 1836, Dickens and his bride began house-
keeping. From Furnival’s Inn Mr. and Mrs. Dickens removed in
the spring of 1837 to 48 Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square, where
Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nicklehy were written. The success of
these works made it possible for the young author and his wife to
leave their little home in Doughty Street for 1 Devonshire Terrace,
Regent’s Park, a handsome structure with a large walled garden.
This was at the close of 1839. At Devonshire House Dickens lived for
twelve years, and here many of his early friends came to know him,
and much of his best work was written, including portions of Martin
Chuzzlewit , A Christmas Carol , The Chimes , The Cricket on the
Hearth t Dombey and Son , and David Copper field. It was here,
too, that “ he realised in his own life some of David Copper-
field’s disenchantment in the contrast between what he had
expected in his married life and what he experienced.” When
the idea of The Old Curiosity Shop came to him Dickens
was, with his w ife, staying at 35 St. James's Square, Bath. They
were visiting Landor, who, it is said, always declared that he
intended to purchase the house in which liis friends had lodged,
and burn it to the ground, that no mean associations should ever
desecrate the birthplace of Littlo Nell. But, as Anna Leach has
pointed out in a charmingly illustrated paper in Munseys Maga-
zine y Dickens wrote most of The Old Curiosity Shop at IJroadstairs,

making several journeys to London to hunt up places where he
could put his characters. Ho w ont one day to that curiously-named
City street, Bovis Marks, specially to look up a house for Sampson
Brass. ‘ I got mingled up with the Jews of Houndsditch,* he
said, 1 and came home in a cab ! ’ but he had created Miss Sally
Brass on the way.” Dickens lived at two houses in Broadstairs,
Lawn Villa and Fort House.

In the autumn of 1851, Dickens removed from Devonshire
Terrace to Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, where Bleak House
was completed, whence Hard Times , Litue Dorrii , and A Tale of

230

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE,

Two Cities were given to the world, and where many of those plays
which have become so famous were presented by the Dickens family
and their friends. Gad’s Hill Place was purchased in 1855, but it
was not till 1859 that Tavistock House was sold and a transfer
was made of the last of the books and furniture to the new home
of which Dickens had dreamed as a boy.

Concerning what was written on the Continent authorities differ,
but some part of The Old Curiosity Shop and The Chimes seems to
have been produced at the Palazzo Peschiere, in Genoa, and it was
in the garden of this Italian beauty spot that Martin Chvzdewit
*was conceived, and that The Cricket on the Hearth was framed.
Then The Battle of Life, Dombey and Son, and parts of Bleak House
and David Copperfield were written amid the scenery of the lovely
Rhone Valley — in Lausanne, Geneva, and Vevey. It remains to
be added that Dickens spent three summers in Boulogne. But
wherever he was humanity interested him above all else. Every-
where he went he “ gathered up people for his books.” But, as
Miss Leach observes, “ it is a little singular that he should have
chosen to immortalise so many of the people and the haunts which
he knew r in the days of his abject misery, when he was a sickly,
uncared-for child.”

dickens’s birthplace.

The house in which the master novelist of the nineteenth century
first saw r the light is now r 387 Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea,
formerly known as Mile End Terrace. Dickens came into the world
on Friday, 7th February 1812, and the boy’s name was registered
“ Charles John Huffham Dickens.” Readers of David Copperfield
will remember the autobiographer writing : “ if it should appear,
from anything I may set down in this narrative, that I was a child
of strong observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my
childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics.”
He told Forster in the early days of their friendship that “ he well
remembered the small front garden in the house at Portsea, from
which he was taken away when two years old.” Dickens recollected
being watched by a nurse through a low kitchen w indow r as he strolled
about with something to eat, a little elder sister alongside him.
The novelist, in company with Forster, when treading again the
infantine localities, often pointed out places first known in childish
days, which were never effaced from memory. — Household Words ,
March 26, 1904.

NO. 4 GOWER STREET NORTH.

A house was taken at No. 4 Gower Street North, whither the
family removed in 1823. This and the adjoining houses had only
just been built. The rate-book shows that No 4 w as taken in the
name of Mrs. Dickens, at an annual rental of £50, and that it w T as
in the occupation of the Dickens family from Michaelmas 1823 to
Lady Day 1824, they having apparently left Bayham Street at

DICKENS'S BIRTH CLACK, COMMERCIAL ROAD, I.ANDPORT,
From a water-colour by Paul Biathlon

PORTSMOUTH

232

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Christmas of the former year. The house, known in recent times as
No. 147 Gower Street, was demolished about 1895, and an extension
of Messrs. Maples premises now occupies the site. The Dickens
residence had six small rooms, with kitchen in basement, each front
room having two windows — altogether a fairly comfortable abode,
but minus a garden. — K 3.

SOMERS TOWN.

In 1825 the elder Dickens removed to a small tenement in Johnson
Street, Somers Town, a poverty-stricken neighbourhood even in
„ those days. Johnson Street was then the last street in Somers
Town, and adjoined the fields between it and Camden Town. It
runs east from the north end of Seymour Street, and the house
occupied by the Dickens family (including Charles, who had, of
course, left his Lant Street 44 paradise ”) was No. 13, at the east end
of the north side, if we may rely upon the evidence afforded by the
rate-book. At that time the house was numbered 29, and rated at
£20, the numbering being changed to 13 at Christmas 1825. In
July of that year the name of the tenant is entered in the rate-book
as Caroline Dickens, and so remains until January 1829, after which
the house is marked “ Empty.” — K 3.

THE ADELPHI.

It will be remembered that David Copperfield, during his bachelor
days, occupied apartments at Mrs. Crupps’, in Buckingham Street,
Adelphi ; we learn, on the authority of Charles Dickens, the younger,
that the author actually rented rooms here before he lived in
Fumival’s Inn, and that these rooms were at the top of one of the
end houses, overlooking the Thames. 44 Charles Dickens,” writes
the novelist’s son, 44 if he lived in David Copperfield’s rooms — as
I have no doubt he did — must have kept house on the top floor of
No. 15 on the east side, the house which displays a tablet com-
memorating its one-time tenancy by Peter the Great.” — K 1.

furnival’s inn.

Fumival’s Inn consisted of two courts of very considerable extent.
The street front, erected about the time of Charles n., was a very
fine brick building, adorned with pilasters, mouldings, and various
other ornaments, and was attributed to Inigo Jones. Tins was
pulled down and rebuilt in 1820, and it was in this new building that
Charles Dickens was living when the Pickwick Papers were published.
Except for this incident, few will regret the recent destruction of
the 4 *new building.” The Gothic Hall, a still older structure than
the front, was a plain brick building, with a small turret and two
large projecting bow windows at the west end . — B 2.

THE STRAND.

When Charles Dickens first became acquainted with Mr. Vincent
Dowling, editor of Bell's Life — or Sleepless Life , as he facetiously

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS.

233

termed it, from its Latin heading, Nunquam Dormio * (“wide
awake”) — he would generally stop at old Tom Goodwin’s oyster
and refreshment rooms, opposite the office, in the Strand. On
one occasion, Mr. Dowling, not knowing who had called, desired
that the gentleman would leave his name, to be sent over to the
office, whereupon young Dickens wrote —

CHARLES DICKENS,

Res ctrrectionist,

In search of a subject.

Some recent cases of body -snatching had then made the matter
a general topic for public discussion, r ad Goodwin pasted up the
strange address-card for the amusement of the medical students who
patronised his oysters. It was still upon his wall when Pickwick
had made Dickens famous, and the old man was never tired of
pointing it out to those whom he was pleased to call his “ bivalve-
demolishcrs ! ” — II 4.

The “ Early Closing Act ” of 1872 not only put an end to places
of so-called “ entertainment ” in the Metropolis as were of no sort
of benefit to anyone save the proprietors and their employes, but
also closed the doors of Evans’s Supper Rooms where admirably per-
formed old English glees, and good songs by professional choristers,
provided a concert lasting from nine until past one, which was a
delight to those who, after dining at their club or en gar^on at the
Piazza Coffee-House, The Cock Tavern, Simpson’s in the Strand,
or elsewhere within easy distance of Co vent Garden, preferred
spending an evening after tho fashion of King Cole with their
tobacco, their glass, and a Welsh rarebit to finish with, to patronising
any theatrical or other “ show ” that attracted so many. . . . Here,
occasionally, came Thackeray, though more often he patronised
the Cider Cellars, or remained in the smoking-room of the Garrick
close at hand ; here came, now and again, Charles Dickens ;* and
on a Wednesday night a majority of tho Punch staff, with Mark
Lemon, would gather about the table in the corner, just to the right
of tho platform, on which the piano stood. I am now describing
the old room as I first knew it during my Eton holidays and during
the earlier part of my Cambridge days. — B 3.

Almost facing the Lyceum portico, in Wellington Street, there
stood for forty years and more a rather gracious-looking, bow-
windowed little structure, prominent yet half-retiring, of good
architectural proportion in its modest way, and having a cosy,
inviting air. Beside it was the st/age entrance, of the Gaiety
Theatre, with a flaunting canvas transparency overhead, for which
its little neighbour becamo a sort of Naboth’s vineyard. Not very
long ago scaffoldings wore reared about it, and the windows were

234

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

bricked up. It passed away unnoticed, and was absorbed into its
garish neighbour without remark ; yet no London “ Oid Mortality ”
could see its condition without a pang ; for it was onco the old,
original “Office of Household Words ,” that favourite “weekly,” read
by all as the inspired utterance of the gifted editor. . . . The little
office has associations yet more interesting, from its connection
with the cheeriest and most buoyant portion of Dickens’s life. From
30th March 1850, the day he founded his journal, to 1859, when he
extinguished it, the place became the scene of a very joyous, in-
spiring portion of his life. Never was he so gaily exuberant, so
full of vivacity, or so fertile in schemes. Here he planned, wrote,
and saw' his friends and contributors ; and here, too, he had many a
little supper after the play. — F 3.

DOUGHTY STREET .

Yates, in his Recollections and Experiences , recalls the Doughty
Street of his day (and of Dickens's) as a “ broad, airy, wholesome
street ; none of your common thoroughfares, to be rattled through
by vulgar cabs and earth-shaking Pickford vans, but a self-included
property, with a gate at each end, and a lodge with a porter in a
gold-laced hat and the Doughty arms on the buttons of his mulberry-
coloured coat, to prevent anyone, except with a mission to one
of the houses, from intruding on the exclusive territory.” The
lodges and gates have been removed since this wars written, and
the porter in official garb disappeared with that exclusiveness
and cpiietude which doubtless attracted Dickens to the spot more
than sixty years ago.

No. 48 Doughty Street (where his daughters Mary and Kate
were bom) is situated on the east side of the street, and contains
tw r elve rooms — a single-fronted, three-storied house, with a railed-
in area in front and a small garden at the rear. A tiny room on
the ground-floor, facing the garden, is believed to have been the
novelist’s study, in which he wrote the latter portion of Pickwick ,
practically the whole of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Xickleby . — K 3.

Life in lodgings, especially in a great city, and with young chil-
dren, is not a very exhilarating state of existence, and it was not long,
therefore, before Sydney Smith established himself in a small
house, No. 8 Doughty Street, Mecklcnburgh Square. Tt is interest-
ing to know r that Charles Dickens, a generation later, also lived
in this street at the period when Pickwick was finished, and Oliver
Twist and Nicholas Nickleby took the world by storm. Sydney
Smith, always quick to recognise genius, was one of the first to
admit the extraordinary fidelity and humour which distinguished
the portraits which Dickens drew from life. In his published
correspondence there are several kindly letters addressed to the
young novelist, and the earliest of them was written to the inventor
of Mr. Pickwick, when he was living in Doughty Street, not many
doors off the house where, thirty-five years before, had been the
home of the man who made the English people acquainted with

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS.

235

the adventures of Dame Partington and the opinions of Peter
Plymley. In that letter, Sydney Smith states that the Miss Berrys
have commissioned him to invite Mr. Dickens to dinner at Richmond,
in order that he may meet “ a Canon of St. Paul’s, the Rector of
Combe-Florey, and the Vicar of Ilalberton — all equally well known
to you,”— Ii 1.

ELM COTTAGE, PETERSHAM.

At Elm Cottage (later called Elm Lodge), Petersham, a pretty
little rural retreat rented by Dickens in the summer of 1839, he
frequently enjoyed the society of his friends — Maclise, Landseer,
Ainsworth, Talfourd, and the rest — many of whom joined in athletic
competitions organised by their energetic host in the extensive
grounds, among other frivolities being a balloon club for children,
of which Forster was elected president on condition that he sup-
plied all the balloons. — K 3,

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.

Dickens’s favourite home was No. 1 Devonshire Terrace, High
Street, Marylcbonc, where, when in town, he lived for twelve years.
Ho came here from 48 Doughty Street, at the end of 1839. He
was then newly married, and in the heyday of the success which
Pickwick , Nicholas Nickleby , and Oliver Twist had brought him.
Here it was that his many friends among the distinguished men of
the day were wont to gather — Macready, Clarkson Stanfield,
Sir Edwin Landseer, Harrison Ainsworth, Talfourd, and Bulwer
were all frequent and welcome guests at Devonshire Terrace. Here
Dickens produced much of his best work, as the following items
will show: 1840-1, Master Humphrey's Clock ; 1842, American
Note s; 1843-4, Life and Adventures of Martin Chnzzlewit , and the
Christmas Carol; 1844, The Chimes ; 1845, The Cricket on the

Hearth ; 1846-52, Dealings with the Firm of Domhey and Son , Whole-
sale , Retail, and for Exportation ; 1849-50, Perso?ial History of

David Copper field. In November 1851, Dickens moved to Tavis-
tock House, Tavistock Square, which had previously been the
residence of Frank Stone, A.R.A., the father of Marcus Stone the
Academician, Years later he said of his affection for his old homo :
“ I seem as if I had plucked myself out of my proper soil when
I left Devonshire Terrace, and could take root no more until I
return to it.” — Westminster Gazette , September 16, 1896.

Miss Dickens recalled her father’s study as “ a pretty room,
with steps leading directly into the garden from it, and with one
extra baize door to keep out all sounds and noise.” — K 1.

Concerning Dickens’s studies, his eldest daughter tells us that
they “ wore always choery, pleasant rooms, and alwavs, like him-
self, the personification of neatness and tidiness. On the shelf
of his writing-table were many dainty and useful ornaments — gifts
from his friends or members of his family — and always a vase of
bright and fresh flowers.” — K 3.

236

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

A contemporary drawing of the house by Daniel Maclise, R.A.,
represents it as detached and standing in its own grounds, with
a wrought-iron entrance -gate surmounted by a lamp -bracket ;
the building consisted of a basement, two storeys, and an attic.
There are only three houses in the Terrace, and immediately beyond
is the burial-ground of St. Marylebone Church. No. 1 Devonshire
Terrace is now semi-detached, having a line of taller residential
structures on the southern side, while a portion of the high brick
wall on the Terrace side has been replaced by an iron railing. The
house itself has been structurally changed since Dickens’s days,
Und has undergone enlargement. — W. R. Hughes, in A Week’s
Tramp in Dickens Land .

TAVISTOCK HOUSE.

Tavistock House was for many years the residence of James
Perry (editor of Dickens’s old paper, the Morning Chronicle , in its
best days), and was then noted for its reunions of men of political
and literary distinction. Eliza Cook, the poetess, also lived in
Tavistock House when she left Grcenhithe, Kent, and Mary Russell
Mitford (authoress of Our Village) became an honoured guest there
in 1818. The house was afterwards divided, and the moiety, which
still retained the name of Tavistock, became the home of Frank
Stone. Dickens held the lease from the Duke of Bedford at a
“ peppercorn ” ground-rent-.

Tavistock House, with Russell House and Bedford House ad-
joining (all the property of the Duke of Bedford and all demolished),
stood at the north-east corner of the private, secluded Tavistock
Square (named after the Marquis of Tavistock, father of the cele-
brated William, Lord Russell), a short distance south of Euston
Road, about midway between Euston Square and the aristocratic
Russell Square, and railed off from Upper Woburn Place.

The exterior of Tavistock House (pulled down in 1001) presented
a plain brick structure of two storeys in height above the ground-
floor, with attics in the roof, an open portico or porch being addckl by
a later tenant ; it contained no less than eighteen rooms, including
a drawing-room capable of holding more than three hundred persons.
On the garden side, at the rear, the house had a bowed front-
somewhat resembling that at Devonshire Terrace. . . . Dickens’s
eldest daughter, in recalling her father’s study at Tavistock House,
remembered it as being larger and more ornate than his previous
sanctum, and describes it as “ a fine large room, opening into the
drawing-room by means of sliding doors. When the rooms were
thrown together,” she adds, “ they gave my father a promenade
of considerable length for the constant indoor walking which formed
a favourite recreation for him after a hard day’s writing.” Here were
written, wholly or partly — Bleak House , Hard Times , Little Dorrit ,
A Tale of Two Cities , and Great Expectalions f his labours being
agreeably diversified by private theatricals. ... In 1885 ana
subsequently Tavistock House was occupied as a Jewish College.

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS.

237

Tavistock House, with its neighbours Bedford House and Russell
House, were razed to the ground about four years ago . — K 3.

FORT HOUSE, BROADSTAIRS.

Fort House, to which were attached pleasure grounds of about
an acre in extent, was approached by a carriage drive, and the
rental value in 1883 was £100 a year. This “airy nest.”(as he described
his Broads tairs home) formed a conspicuous landmark in the locality,
and proved a constant source of attraction to visitors by reason of
its associations. Edmund Yates thus describes it as seen by him
at a subsequent period : “ It is a small house without any large

FORT HOUSE, liKOADSTMKS

A favourite seaside resort of the novelist’s, popularly but
erroneously known as “ Bleak House.”

rooms, but such a place as a man of moderate means, with an im-
moderate family of small children, might choose for a summer re-
treat. The sands immediately below afford a splendid playground
there is an abundant supply of never-failing ozone ; there is a good
lawn, surrounded by borders well-stocked with delicious-smelling
common English flowers, and there is, or was in those days, I imagine,
ample opportunity for necossary seclusion. The room in which
Dickens worked is on the first floor, a small, three-cornered slip,
1 about the size of a warm bath,’ as he would have said, but with
a large expansive window commanding a magnificent sea-view.
His love for the place, and his gratitude for the good it always did
him, are recorded in a hundred letters .” — K 3.

238

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

FOLKESTONE.

“ Boz,” who at the time he wrote his sketch “ Out of Town ”
lived close to the South-Eastern line — his station was at Higliam . . .
was frequently tempted to run down to the Pavilion, or pass through
it, making a little flight to Paris. . . . The Pavilion Hotel being on
the line to Paris, and hospitably at hand after stormy passages,
“ Boz ” naturally had a tender interest in the place which had
received him so kindly and bound up his wounds. It was one of the
incidents of his high position and reputation, that at every hostelry
he was made much of, with extra attention, accommodation,
cookery, etc. — though I imagine that these attentions often found
their way into the bills. But apart from this, he was deeply in-
terested in the establishment — chiefly, as I have said, because it
was associated with so much that was agreeable. — F 2.

BOULOGNE.

News reaches us that the house in Boulogne in which Dickens
w r rote Little Dorr it has been pulled down. Dickens thought that
this house had the most delightful of all the gardens attached to
any house that he had inhabited on the Continent. These grounds
still remain, and little English and French children are playing in
them to-day — the pupils of the nuns known as the Ladies of
Nazareth. They have built their chapel on the site of the house
in which the author who loved little children lived and w rote.
In another little habitation in the same neighbourhood Dickens
stayed one summer, and should you visit Boulogne you will have
shown you the dressing-room in which he finished Bleak Hov.se. The
neighbours, by the way, thought Dickens every inch a Frenchman
until he opened his mouth. You cannot pass through Boulogne
without stumbling over a pile of Dickens’s reminiscences. — The
Bookman (New York), vol. ix.

“ Boz’s ” sketch of “ Our French Watering-Place,” an account of
his residence at Boulogne, is one of his most charming efforts. He
was there in the years 1853 and 1856. The old “ High Town ” had
for him an extraordinary attraction — as, indeed, it must have for
anyone with a feeling for the old w orld. He pitched his camp, not
by the bustling port, but high up on the very crest of the hill, on the
downs, well beyond the Old Town, and in one of those pleasant
French country-houses so complimentarily styled “ chateaux.”

Last year [1904], being in Boulogne, I set forth to sec if I could find
this pleasant retreat ; but no one knew of it, or even that Dickens
had been in any way associated with the place. This is not sur-

{ )rising, as it was nigh half a century ago. I had even heard that
t had been partially levelled or rebuilt. But a friendly English
bookseller, living high up, in the Grande Rue, knew all about the
matter, and put me on the right track. I took my wav, accord-
ingly, to the left of the Old Town, struck out of the Boulevard
M&nette, past the coquettish little dancing-garden known as the
Tintilleries, went on higher and yet higher, until I reached the

Still

iiui

sushi

TIIK HOUSE, HTRXIVM.'s INN NO. IS DOUUHTV STREET

The earliest homo of the novel’ll after quit- Fir^t house after marriage. Con
ting his father’s, 18:13 -30. Here Sketches by eluding numbers of Pickwick, Twist
Hoz and un*"t. of Pickin' -k were written and A ickbby written here, 1837—10

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE NO. 0 HYDE DARK PLACE

Dickens lived here from 18f>0 till J8C>0. Weak The last temporary residence, Nov.
House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit , and A Tale of I860- May 1870, in London, where
Two Cities were written here most of Edwin Drood was written

SOME OF DICKENS S LONDON HOMES

240

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Rue Beaurepaire, where I was told I would assuredly find the
ch&teau. Before me was a rude stone wall, built of cobbles,
and within the stone wall was “ the property ” of M. Beaucourt,
“Boz’s” landlord, and whom he has described so humorously.
But the chateau itself, where was it ? There were two chateaux,
both occupied by Dickens at different visits, and bearing different
names. The first was gone. Instead, here was a huge monastic
building, with an imposing church or chapel in front, of a
Gothic kind, whose windows were filled with stained glass. Now
it seemed all silent, dusty, and deserted — “ shut up,’* in fact ;
and so it was, as a little mean advertisement affixed to the
wall told us — “ Maison a Vendre ou a Louer.” The late Law
of Suppression had been at work here, and the good nuns and
their protegees had been ejected. The building seemed of recent
erection, and must have cost much. But, again, where was the
chateau ? The convent “ stood in its own grounds/’ There was
a large growth of trees rich in foliage at the back, on the rising hill,
planted over fifty years ago, before “ Box’s ” tenancy. But at the
comer, nestling among them, I noted a modest, unpretending
building — large villa rather than chateau — yellow all over, with a
triangular pediment, its windows, three in a row, garnished with
green “ jalousies.” All the ground about it, a large field of a couple
of acres, sloping to the road, formed “ the property ” or estate of
which the admirable Beaucourt (“ M. Loyal ” in the sketch) was
so proud. — F 2.

GENOA.

Early in August 1844 [during his stay in Italy], Dickens had
rented rooms in the Palazzo Peschiere for his winter residence ;
it being the largest palace in Genoa on hire, standing on elevated
ground in the outskirts of the town and surrounded by its own
gardens, and to this “ Palace of the Fish-Ponds ” he transferred
himself and his belongings at the end of September. — K 1. [See
section “ On the Continent.”]

gad’s fclLL.

We come now to note Dickens’s change of residence from Tavis-
tock House, Tavistock Square, to Gad’s Hill Place, Kent, or, as the
great man himself always wrote it, with that amplitude and un-
mistakable clearness which made him wTite, not only the day of
the month, but the day of the week, in full at the head of his letters —
Oad } 8 Hill Place , Higham, by Rochester , Kent. How he came to live
here is pleasantly told by a friend ( Daily News , 15th June 1870) :

“ Though not bom at Rochester, Mr. Dickens spent some portion
of his boyhood there ; and was wont to tell how his father, the late
Mr. John Dickens, in the course of a country ramble, pointed out
to him as a child the house at Gad’s Hill Place, saying, ‘ There, my
boy, if you work and mind your book, you will, perhaps, one day
live in a house like that.’ This speech sunk deep, and in after-

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS.

241

years, and in the course of his many long pedestrian rambles through
the lanes and roads of the pleasant Kentish country, Mr. Dickens
came to regard this Gad’s Hill House lovingly, and to wish himself
its possessor. This seemed an impossibility. The property was so
held that there was no likelihood of its ever coming into the market ;
and so Gad’s Hill came to be alluded to jocularly, as representing a
fancy which was pleasant enough in dreamland, but would never
be realised.

“ Meanwhile the years rolled on, and Gad’s Hill became almost
forgotten. Then a further lapse of time, and Mr. Dickens felt a
strong wish to settle in the country, and determined to let Tavistock
House. About this time, and by the strangest coincidences, his
intimate friend and close ally, Mr. W. H. Wills, chanced to sit next
to a lady at a London dinner-party, w ho remarked, in the course of
conversation, that a house and grounds had come into her possession
of which she wanted to dispose. The reader will guess the rest.
The house was in Kent, was not far from Rochester, had this and
that distinguishing feature which made it like Gad’s Hill and like
no other place ; and (he upshot of Mr. Wills’s dinner- table chit-chat
with a lady whom he had never met before was, that Charles Dickens
realised the dream of his youth and became the possessor of Gad’s
Hill.” The purchase was made in the spring of 1856 . — H 4.

Dickens paid the purchase-money for Gad’s Hill Place on 14th
March 1856 ; it was a Friday, and, handing the cheque to Wills,
he observed: “ Now, isn’t it an extraordinary thing — look at the
day — Friday ! I have been nearly drawing it half a dozen times,
when the lawyers have not been ready, and here it comes round
upon a Friday as a matter of course.” He frequently remarked
that all the important events of his life happened to him on a Friday.
Referring to this transaction, Mrs. Lynn Linton, in My Literary
Life says : “ We sold it cheap, £1700, and we asked £40 for the
ornamental timber. To this Dickens and his agent made an objec-
tion ; so wo had an arbitrator, who awarded us £70, which was in
the nature of a triumph.” The property comprised eleven acres
of land, a considerable portion of which Dickens subsequently
acquired through private negotiations with the respective owners.
Not many w r ceks had elapsed after the death of Dickens when
Gads Hill Place was disposed of by public auction. The house,
with eight acres of meadow land, was virtually bought in by Charles
Dickens, the younger, at the much -enhanced price of £7500. For
a time the novelist’s eldest son made it his home. After being a
considerable time on the market, the property was purchased in
1879 by Captain (afterwards Major) Austin F. Budden, then of
the 12th Kent Artillery Volunteers, and Mayor of Rochester from
that year until 1881. In 1889 Gad's Hill Place narrowly escaped
destruction by fire. It is the old story — a leakage of gas, a naked
light, and an oxplosion ; happily, Major Budden’ s supply of hana-
grenades did their duty and saved the building. Shortly after-
wards the house and accompanying land were again in the market.

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS.

243

and in 1890 a purchaser was found in the Hon. Francis Law Latham,
Advocate-General at Bombay. — K 3.

Gad’s Hill was notorious for robbers in Shakespeare’s time. The
allusion here is to the incident recorded in King Henry IV Act i.
Scene 2, where Poins says, addressing Falstaff, Prince Henry, and
the others —

“ But, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning by four o’clock
early, at Gad’s Hill. There are pilgrims going to Canterbury with
rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses ; I
have vizards for you all ; you have horses for yourselves.”

At Dickens’s request, this quotation was handsomely illuminated
by Owen Jones, and placed in the entrance hall at Gad’s Hill. — K 1.

I have just returned from a pilgrimage (many a pilgrim has gone
to a shrine with a far less reverent joy) to Gad’s Hill Place. The
present owner, Mr. Latham, has greatly improved, without altering
the general appearance of, the home of Dickens. He lias introduced
more light and air both into the house and grounds, developing
the capabilities of the place, after the example of those who preceded
him ; but there is no material change. The dear old study remains
as it was [1897], with the dummy books on the door and on part
of the walls, bearing the quaint titles which Dickens invented for
them :

Kant's Eminent Humbugs , 10 vols. The Gunpowder Magazine .

Drowscy's Recollections of Nothing. J.ady God mi , on her Horse. Evi-
dences of Christianity, by King Henry the Eighth. Hayward's Guide
to Refreshing' Sleep . Strutt's Walk. Malthus' Nursery Songs. Cats'
Lives , in 9 volumes. History of the Middling Ages. Five Minutes in
China Swallows , on Emigration. History of a Short Chancery Suit , in
19 volumes. A. Carpenter's Bench of Bishops. Butcher's Suetonius.
Cribb's edition of Miller .

In the garden is the tiny grave, tombstone, and epitaph of “ Dick,” a
beloved canary- - -

This is the Grave of
DICK,

The Best of Birds,

Born at Broad st a irs. Midsummer, 1851.

Died at Gad's Hill Place, October 14, 1866.

— . // 3.

ROCHESTER.

Longfellow, Dickens, and Forster are associated with Rochester
Castle by an odd and awkward incident. Both were about to show
their poet friend the old building, when, as Forster says, in his best
oracular way, “ they wore met by one of those prohibitions which
are the wonder of visitors and the shame of Englishmen. We
overleaped gates and barriers, and, sotting at defiance repeated
threats of all the terrors of the law coarsely expressed to us by the
custodian of the place, explored minutely the Castle ruins.” The

244

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

only explanation would seem to be that charges for admission were
made . — F 2.

The evening of a summer’s day is the best time to enter Rochester.
At such times a golden haze spreads over the city and the river,
and renders both a dream of beauty. The gilt ship on the Guildhall
blazes like molten metal ; the “ moon-faced clock ” of the Corn
Exchange is correspondingly calm ; and the wide, hospitable en-
trance halls of the older inns begin to glow with light. You should
have walked a good fifteen miles or more on the day of your first
coming into Rochester, and then you will appreciate aright the
mellow comforts of its old inns. But not at once will the connois-
seur of antiquity and first impressions who thus enters the old city
repair him to his inn. He will turn into the Cathedral precincts,
underneath the archway of Chertsey’s Gate, and I hope he will not
already have read Edwin Drood, because an acquaintance with that
tale quite spoils one’s Rochester, and leaves an ineffaceable mark
of a modem, sordid tragedy upon the hoary stones of Cathedral,
Castle, and Close. It is as though one had come to the place after
reading the unrelieved brutality of a newspaper report. Rochester
demands a romance of the Ivanhoe type ; chivalry or necessities
of State should have ennobled slaughter here ; a tale of secret murder
for private ends vulgarises and tarnishes the place, especially when
it is told with all the wealth of local allusion that Dickens, who knew
it so well, employs.

If, therefore, the traveller of whom I have spoken comes to
Rochester without first having read Edwin I)rood> his will be a visit
singularly fortunate, and unprejudiced by the sordid mysteries ol
that unworthy story. But should he have delved deep into the
mystery, the sham Gothic sentiment and maudlin love-making
of that unfinished work, the beauty and charm of Rochester will be
to him, if not a sealed book, at least a smirched page. The stranger
who comes to Rochester and knows it already from Dickens’s ulti-
mate story ; who adventures into the Close, and from the open
west door of the Cathedral peers up the fino perspective of the nave,
feels that those holy stones have been done a wrong, that they have
witnessed a crime, and that this Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew
should be reconsecrated. This is no belittling of Dickens or his
works. The hand of the master had not lost its cunning when
he wrought upon the manuscript in his study at Gad’s Hill Place
on the other side of the river, at the back of beyond. But he,
no less than other great men, had his limitations. His province
was large ; he could harp upon the domestic affections, and the
suburbs wept copiously when he willed it so ; but though his
frontiers were so far-reaching, and his following so whole-heartedly
with him, he could not successfully overpass them into the
smaller and more exclusive states wherein men wrote from hard- won
knowledge of the Liberal Arts.

That one should feel so strongly on the subject of coupling
Rochester with Edwin Drood need be no offence to hero-worshippers,
of whom Dickens has still a goodly store. It will be but this much

NO. 1 DEVONSHIRE TERRACE
London residence of Charles Dickens, from 1839 to 1861
From a drawing by D. Maclise , R.A,

245

246

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

to many — a tribute to those descriptive and narrative powers he
wielded, that clothe his characters with so great an air of reality
that their deeds or misdeeds can even cast a lasting smirch upon so
fair a city, or ennoble a spot the most sordid and common-place.
But it is singularly unfortunate for those who prefer murders
decently old and historical that the great novelist should have thus
brought the atmosphere of the police-court into the grave and
reverend calm of this ancient city.

My traveller, happily unversed in all this, will gaze upon the
Cathedral and the Castle Keep, where the rooks are circling to rest,
and coming again into the High Street will turn to his inn, where
appetite, sharpened by pedestrianism and fresh air, may be as well
appeased now as in those days of heavy eating and no less heavy
drinking, . when seventy-two coaches passed through Rochester
daily, and the trains that thunder across the Medway were un-
dreamed of. The inns of Rochester receive, as may well be supposed,
many pilgrims who, for love of Chaucer, of Shakespeare, of Dickens,
come hither, not alone from all parts of England, but from America
and all the foreign-speaking countries of the earth. — William Owen,
in Architecture.

CRAVESEND.

The following unpublished letter from the pen of Charles Dickens
to a one-time Mayor of Gravesend was only saved from the liames
by a fortunate accident. Since then, for some forty years, it has
lain almost forgotten until recently, when it was again brought
into the light of day. The paper on which it is written is in excellent
condition, and the writing, in the familiar blue ink, is still perfectly
legible, except that in some words the finer lines have faded. The
latter is dated from —

“ Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London, W.C.,

“ Monday , twenty-fourth October 1859.

“ Dear Sir, — As I have to bo at Oxford to-morrow I cannot
possibly have the pleasure of receiving you, and the gentleman
associated with you, at the time you propose. If you will do me the
favour to address a note to me at Gad’s Hill on Saturday, making
me acquainted with the nature of the business on which you wish
to see me, I will promptly reply to it. Referring to a requost made
to me from Gravesend some time ago, I think it not improbable
that you may contemplate asking me to read there. Should this
be so, I am bound to inform you at once that it is wholly out of the
question, and that my compliance is not in any reason possible.
I receive so many similar requests that even to answer them, how-
ever briefly, is often, I assure you, a serious interference with the
pursuits of my life. -—Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens.

“ E. Gregory, Esquire.”

The delicate sarcasm and the carefully chosen phrases, capable
of so many interpretations, make the letter of the greatest interest

HIS HOMES AND HAUNTS.

247

to Dickensians, even if it did not throw considerable light on the
antipathy that is generally believed to have existed between Dickens
and the town and townsmen of Gravesend. When this antipathy
started, or what first gave rise to it, or, in other words, who first gave
the cause for offence, it is impossible to say ; but there does not
appear to be much room for doubt that some more or less defined
ill-feeling existed.

Dickens was perfectly familiar with Gravesend, and when going to
London he invariably walked or drove from Gad’s Hill to Gravesend
Central Station. Yet, strangely enough, the town scarcely appears
by name in the novels, and when it does it is with the merest mention.
This may havo been regarded, even in 1859, as an offence by the
Gravesenders of the time ; or the scarcely veiled caricature of the
town as Muggleton -Dickens was living at Chalk at the time he
wrote — may have had still more to do with it. But to those who
know the circumstances there appears little doubt that this refusal
of a favour before it was asked tlnew the novelist himself, though
not necessarily his works, into disfavour in Gravesend. And pro-
bably the “ feeling ” engendered was increased by the know ledge
that Dickens's guess was a correct one, as no record is available
of any further correspondence on the subject.

The friendly and masked raillery of the early chapters of Pickwick
were regarded as ill-natured. Quite likely the streets of the town
were disappointing. They were not the “ streets ” Dickens
craved for so consistently. At that time they were narrow and dirty,
and the town was filled with day-trippers, who, judging from the
early guide-books. left, the interest of the city behind them without
acquiring that of the country. Some of the characters in Pickwick ,
in Great Expectations , and in others of the novels are taken from life
around Gravesend, but they do not enter the town itself — in fact,
they never get nearer to it than Chalk, then cut off by nearly a mile
of fields . — Daily Chronicle , July 31, 1909.

XII

DICKENS’S LONDON

To map out Dickens’s country would be inordinately to map
out London ; and for that literary-geographical task a directory
and not a magazine article would be requisite. If one could depict
the London scenes associated with Dickens’s offspring, one would
have a Topographical Survey that would vie with the masterpieces
of the Ordnance Department. One might start with Captain
Sim Tappertit, from Paper Buildings, and go north, west, south,
and east, finding hardly a street or square or court untrodden onco
of the clan of Dickens. One may hear much good and ill of Fur-
nival’ s Inn; but has it any chronicle better than that here (in
the first months of his married life) Dickens wrote most of Pick’
wick ? Hungerford Stairs may now be forgotten in Charing Cross
Station. But the name is in the sure keeping of David Copperfidd.
Rumour has it that Lincoln’s Inn Fields is no longer what it was ;
but the pilgrim will not forget No. 58, where Forster lived, and
where Dickens read the MS. of The Chimes to Carlyle, Maclise,
and others, and where, too, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Bleak House , had
his abode. Much minor poetry has been written at or near Fountain
Court, but none so enduring as the unversified episode of Tom
Pinch and Ruth. The Wooden Midshipman may be hard to find,
but the thirsty explorer in the City may mention Captain Cuttle
and perchance be guided to the Minories. In fact, anywhere,
from Clerkenwell Green, where the Artful Dodger educated Oliver
Twist in the way his right hand should go, to the Spaniards’ Inn
at Hampstead, where Mr. Pickwick enjoyed tea ; from Bow Bells,
where to-day another Domhey and Son succeed without a Mr. Carker
as manager, to that far suburban west that may almost be said to
reach to Stoke Pogis, where not alone lies Gray, but also (in the
pious wish of many) Wilkins Micawber, who sighed, on one occa-
sion, to be laid with the rude forefathers of that particular hamlet
— anywhere, I repeat, one might wander, with surety of being
in Dickens-land, of coming upon some house, court, street, square,
or locality associated with the personages of that marvellous tragi-
comedy, the “ world ” of Dickens . — S 7.

Many places of London have gained an altogether undeserved
reputation as scenes of Dickens incidents. The real difficulties

248

DICKENS’S LONDON.

249

of taking a tour through Dickens’s London are many. First, some
of the most famous scenes of the novels have no originals. In
other cases the originals have been swept away, leaving no traces
of their existence behind. Thirdly, amalgamations of several
existing places were taken to form a composite picture for the novel,
or the originals were altered to fit the exigencies of the story. But
last, and of greater importance, are those places which remain
and are easily distinguishable as genuine originals of scenes in
Dickens’s London.

In Lincoln’s Inn, at the east side of New Square, we find Chichester
Rents, running into Chancery Lane, which is to be identified as
the court in which, in the house nearest Lincoln’s Inn, on the south
side, Krook kept his rag and bottle shop. Chichester Rents
has recently been rebuilt, but while it stood it was impossible
to mistake Krook’s house, so closely did its position tally with
the description in the book. Soho Square, where Esther and
Caddy Jelly by met to talk, is still a quiet place in the neighbour-
hood of Newman Street. But Thavies Inn is a vastly different
place from the dwelling-place of the Jellyby family. Bell Yard,
too, now a thoroughfare running down by the Law Courts, is com-
pletely altered from the narrow alley where “ Charley ” kept a home
for her little brother and sister, and where she was found by Mr.
Jamdyce. There is one other scene from Bleak House which can
be identified, though now altered beyond recognition. This is
the burial-ground where Captain Ilawdon was buried, and at the
gates of which Lady Dedlock died. It opened out of Russell
Court, which ran between Catherine Street and Drury Lane. These
have now been pulled down and their place taken by a broad
thoroughfare.

If London associations in Chuzzletvit be few, there is one site
which stands out with a wonderful prominence, and that is Fountain
Court in the Temple. Coming to David Copperfield , there are
certain places which stand out as absolutely identified, many
that are uncertain, and several that have entirely disappeared.
Gone are the King’s Bench Prison, Hungerford Market, and Hunger-
ford Stairs, the market being below where is now Charing Cross.
In Hungerford Market dwelt Mr. Dick during Miss Trotwood’s
stay in David’s chambers, and here Mr. Peggotty kept a room
until such time as his dream should come true. Hungerford Stairs
— now completely vanished, banished by the Embankment and
Bridge — saw the departure of the Micawbers. In Gray’s Inn —
Gray’s Inn Colfee- House, by the way, is gone— lived Traddles
with " the dearest girl,” at No. 2 Holborn Court. David Copperfield’s
chambers in Buckingham Street, Strand, are still unaltered. They
consisted of a little half-blind entry where you could see hardly
anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing
at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom.

One of the most prominent places in Little Dorrit has disappeared
—I mean the Marshalsea Prison, which has gone the way of the
King’s Bench and Fleet Prisons. Even now, however, anybody

250

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

going down the High Street, Borough, and seeking Angel Place
will find the spot where Little Dorrit was born and lived for many
years, the Marshalsea Wall being still in existence. Another
place to be identified is Little Dorrit’s church — St. George the
Martyr — also in the Borough High Street, in the vestry of which
she slept on a bed of cushions, with a book of registers for her
pillow, -when shut out of prison for the night. — Charles W. Dickens,
in Munset/s Magazine , September 1902.

Reading Mr. Hughes’s Tramp in Dickens Land the other day
I noted that its author observes that he failed to locate several
of the places made use of by Dickens in his Bleak House , especially,
as I understood him, the home of Snagsby. With your permission
1 will relate what I recollect of the matter. Of course, I cannot
vouch for the truth of the tradition ; but I give it for what it is
worth.

Bleak House was published in 1853 ; and about 1857 or 1858 (and
for some ten years afterwards) I was employed at the Athenamm
office in Look’s Court, Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. (Dickens
calls it Cook’s Court, but he often altered a letter.) There is,
however, no doubt about the locality of the court where Chadband
took tea with Mrs. Snagsby, for Dickens describes the house as
being situated on the east side of Chancery Lane, in a court running
northwards out of Cursitor Street. At the time that I om alluding
to it was a common tradition in Look’s Court that No. 18, on the
eastern side, was the identical house which Dickens had in his
mind's eye. It was inhabited by a law stationer and writer, who
was then believed by some to be the “ original ” of the Mr. Snagsby
of Bleak House.

About four doors from the south-western corner of Took’s Court
was the “ Sponging-House,” or lock-up for debtors, called by
Dickens “ Coavinscs — I think that the name of the proprietor
was Sloman. The long garden of the house was covered over
by an iron trellis-work, forming a sort of cage in which the debtors
could take exercise without escaping from the custody of the
bumbailiff. At least, so I understood it at the time. The site of
Coavinses is now covered by the Imperial Club. Snagsby’s house
is very old, and is likely soon to be demolished.

The original of Miss Elite could often be seen in Chancery Lane,
playfully tapping the white-wigged gentlemen on the back with
her walking-stick. This was, of course, before the Law Courts
were built in the Strand, and when the Chancery Courts were a
couple of hovels built on the vacant space to be seen immediately
you walked through the gateway into Lincoln’s Inn (western side of
Chancery Lane). — W. J. Fitzsimmons, in the Times , October 23, 1895.

The clearances that have been in progress during the last three
years in that inconceivably dirty and overcrowded quarter of
Central London — Clare Market — are presently to be pushed forward
with greater rapidity. A great number of crazy tenements, old,
but of little interest, have already disappeared, and just lately the

DICKENS’S LONDON.

251

last of the old bulk-shops was closed. This was a tottering and
cavernous old place in Gilbert’s Passage, leading from Portugal
Street directly into Clare Market, and was occupied at the last by
a poulterer. The “ bulk ” which gave these shops their distinctive
name was a fixed board, or bench running along the frontage, outside
the shutters, accompanied by an overhanging pent. The nearest
resemblance Jo a bulk to be seen in modem shops is the slab seen
projecting from the frontage of a fishmonger’s. That, however,
is generally of marble. On the hard and unpliant beds afforded
by the wooden bulks were wont to sleep the authors, poets, and
journalists of the 4 4 good old times,” when Grub Street hacks earned
barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Not that genius
was a stranger to the bulk as a bed, for Richard Savage often couched
on one for the night, to be rudely awakened by indignant shop-
keepers in the early morn and damned for a dissipated rogue, and
Nat Lee passed from a drunken sleep to death on a bulk in Clare
Market — perhaps on this very spot.

Close by, and shortly to be removed in the course of these im-
provements, is that “Old Curiosity Shop,” to which every ardent
soul learned in Dickens lore has made pilgrimage. Although it has
been said this tumble-down tenement is not actually the one Dickens
had in his mind, yet the tradition is indestructible, and some years
ago, when it was in imminent danger of suddenly collapsing like
a pack of cards, Mr. Bruce Smith, the eminent scene-painter, was
called in at Christmas time to exercise his skill in carpentry on it,
for no other reason than that of preserving a Dickens landmark. 1 —
Daily News , December 1, 1890.

In his admirable little book. Rambles in Dickens Ixind (S. T.
Frcemantle, 1899), Mr. Robert Allhut outlines a series of ten
“ rambles,” five of which are in Dickens's London : (1) From
Charing Cross to Lincoln’s Inn Fields; (2) from Lincoln’s Inn to
the Mansion-House ; (\\) from Charing Cross to Thavies Inn, Holborn
Circus; (4) from Holborn Circus to Tottenham Court Road; and
(5) from the Bank of England to Her Majesty’s Theatre (now His
Majesty’s Theatre). The book is cleverly illustrated by Helen M.
James. We give an indication of the chief places of interest noted
en route , omitting the inns, these being dealt with separately :

(1) In Craven Street, Strand, was the residence of Mr. Brownlow,
the benevolent friend of Oliver Twist. Near by was Hungerford
Stairs, where stood the famous blacking factory. In Hungerford
Market, on the site of which Charing Cross Station is built, was the
chandler’s shop over which Mr. Peggotty slept on the night of his
first arrival in London. Bed ford bury was the locality of Tom-
all- Alone’s. Covent Garden Theat re was selected by David Copper-
field as his initial place of entertainment in the great city. ^ St.
Martin’s Hall, where Dickens gave his first series of paid readings,

1 Steps were being taken in the spring of 1910 for the preservation
of this old landmark; but its claim to be the original of the Old
Curiosity Shop is quite unfounded.

252

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

was burnt down, supplanted by the Queen’s Theatre, and this, in
turn, was converted into the Clergy Co-operative Stores. Strand
Lane is associated with David Copperfield’s visits to the Old Roman
Bath, in which he had “ many a cold plunge.” In Norfolk Street
were the lodgings of Mrs. Lirriper, whilst near by, in the Church of
St. Clement Danes, we have the scene of Mrs. Lirriper’s wedding.

(2) In Lincoln’s Inn Hall the case of “ Jamdyce Jarndyce ”
dragged “ its slow length along.” In Old Square were the offices of
Messrs. Kenge & Carboy. Breams Buildings mark the northern
boundary of the former site of Symond’s Inn, where Mr. Vholes
•had his chambers, and Richard Carstone and his young wife Ada
resided. In Bell Yard lodged Gridley, “ the man from Shropshire,”
and Neckett, the servitor of Coavinses. “Bell Yard” forms the
heading of a touching and beautiful chapter (xv.) of Bleak House.
Opposite Temple Bar was the old building of Child’s Bank, the
Tellson’s Bank of A Tale of Two Cities. Fountain Court was the
meeting-place of Tom Pinch and his sister Ruth, and in Garden
Court, beyond, Mr. Pip and his friend Herbert Pocket had residence.
In Pump Court were in all probability situated the chambers where
Tom Pinch was installed as librarian by the mysterious Mr. Fips,
and Martin Chuzzlewit gave the virtuous Mr. Pecksniff a “ warm
reception.” In Paper Buildings Sir John Chester had his residential
chambers, and in the vicinity were the chambers of Mr. Stryver,
K.C. Goldsmith’s Buildings probably overlook the “ dismal church-
yard ” referred to in Our Mutual Friend. Into the retirement of
Clifford’s Inn Passage Mr. Rokesmith withdrew from the noise of
Fleet Street, with Mr. Boffin, when offering that gentleman his
services as secretary. Near St. Dunstan’s Church was the pump at
which Hugh, from The Maypole, sobered himself on one occasion
prior to visiting Sir John Chester. Probably Toby Veck knew that
pump. Bouverie Street is full of Dickens memories, containing
as it does the offices of the Daily News and Messrs. Bradbury &
Evans (now Bradbury, Agnew, & Co.). In Hanging Sword Alley
Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher had his apartments. In Wine Office Court
is the old inn where it is thought Charles Darnay, on his acquittal,
was persuaded by Sydney Carton to dine in his company. In the
days of Barnaby Budge Farringdon Market was known as Fleet
Market. The Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street stands on the
site of the old Fleet Prison. La Belle Sauvage will be familiar to
readers of Pickwick. At a tavern in Ludgate Hill Mr. Arthur
Clennam rested on his arrival from Marseilles. By St. Paul’s Ralph
Nickleby corrected his watch on his way to the London Tavern.
Dean’s Court, formerly Doctors’ Commons, is referred to by Sam
Weller. The offices of Spenlow & Jorkins were in this locality.
Wood Street, Cheapside, is associated with Great Expectations.
The Bells of St. Mary-le-Bow are mentioned in Dombey and Son.
In the City Court attached to the Guildhall was tried the memorable
breach of promise case of “ Bardell v. Pickwick.”

(3) The situation of what was once Jacob’s Island, a place associ-
ated with the adventures of Oliver Twist, may be easily reached from

DICKENS'S LONDON.

253

the railway station in Spa Road, Bermondsey. At the end of
Queen Street is the locality of Quilp’s Wharf. Mr. Wilfer suggested
the neighbourhood of Trinity House, Tower Hill, as a waiting-place
for Bella on the occasion of their “ innocent elopement ” to Green-
wich. In Little Dorrit Southwark Bridge is referred to as the
Iron Bridge. Near to Bartholomew Close were the offices of Mr.
Jaggers. Smithfield and the Old (now New) Bailey recall the first
arrival in London of Mr. Pip. Newgate was the scene of Charles
Darnay’s trial in A Tale of Two Cities . Near Clerkenwell Green
Oliver Twist became enlightened as to the business of Charley
Bates and the Artful Dodger. In Hatton Yard was the police
court where Oliver Twist was taken on a charge of theft. In Field
Lane, now “improved” away, was the abode of Fagin the Jew.
In Bleeding Hart Yard was the factory of Messrs. Doyce and
Clennam, and here Mr. and Mrs. Plornish lived. Mrs. Jellyby and
family lived in Thavies Inn.

(4) Mr. Pip lived with Herbert Pocket in Barnard’s Inn. In
Furnival’s Inn Dickens had bachelor apartments and lived for a time
after his marriage. Staple Inn was the favourite summer promenade
of the meditative Mr. Snagsby, and Mr. Grewgious had chambers
here. In South Square, Gray’s Inn, may be found the upper
chambers occupied by Mr. Traddles and his wife Sophy. The
offices of Mr. Pickwick’s legal adviser, Mr. Perker, were also in Gray’s
Inn. In Kingsgate Street “ Poll ” Sweedlepipe had his business
location, and Mrs. Gamp had lodgings. In Southampton Street
lodgings were taken by Mr. Grewgious, for Miss Twinkleton and
Rosa, of the redoubtable Mrs. Billickin. [In Queen Square, Great
Ormond Street, we come into touch with a foundation — the Chil-
dren’s Hospital — which Charles Dickens did so much to help. The
novelist’s homos in Doughty Street, Devonshire Terrace, and
Tavistock Square have been dealt with at some length under the
chapter on “ Homes and Haunts,” and the same remark may be made
with reference to Gower Street, and his other London homes.] Mr.
Merdle lived in Harley Street, and Mr. Dombey’s dwelling was in
Mansfield Street. In the neighbourhood of Cavendish Square,
probably Wigmore Street, was Madame Mantalini’s fashionable
dressmaking establishment ; while in Wimpole Street was the West
End residence of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin. Near by Silas Wegg kept
his street-stall. In Welbeck Street was the London residence of
Lord George Gordon, of “ Riots ” fame. Devonshire House is
reminiscent of the first production by Dickens and his amateur
troupe of Not so Bad as We Seem . In the Old St. James’s Hall
were given several of the great readings. In Piecadilty were
formerly the offices of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, the publishers
of Dickens’s novels ; the lirm quite a long time ago removed to
Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In Golden Square was the office
of Mr. Ralph Nickleby. In Newman Street was situated Mr. Turvey-
drop’s Dancing Academy. Doctor Manette and his daughter had
lodgings not far from Soho Square ; and a street leading from Charing
Cross Road to Greek Street, Soho, is now called Manette Street.

254 DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

(5) It will be remembered that the Bank of England was Dombey
and Son’s “ magnificent neighbour.” In St. Mary Axe Pubsey &
Co. had their place of business. In Bevis Marks there once existed
the house of Mr. Sampson Brass, where the Marchioness lived, or
rather starved, as maid-of-all-work. Mincing Lane has been identi-
fied as the locality of Messrs. Chicksey, Veneering, & Stobbles. In
King’s Head Court, Fish Street Hill, once stood the Commercial
Boarding-House of Mrs. Todgers. London Bridge was the scene
of Nancy’s interview with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylje ; while
Mrs. Rudge and her son Barnaby lived in a Southwark by-street.
The Marshalsea Prison, long since passed away, stood in the
Borough ; it was here that Dickens’s father was imprisoned for
debt, and the place, with the adjoining St. George’s Church, is
intimately associated with the story of Little Dorrit and her family.
In Lant Street Dickens lodged whilst his father was an inmate of
the Marshalsea. Past Suffolk Street, one comes to the site of the
old King’s Bench Prison, in which Mr. Micawber was detained. At
the east side of Newington Causeway is Union Road, late Horse-
monger Lane, where stood the gaol, erected at the back of the
Surrey Sessions House, where Dickens witnessed the execution of
the Mannings, a sight that stimulated him to write the two letters
to the Times on the demoralising effect of public executions. Mr.
Chivery resided with his family in Horsemonger Lane. At the
Surrey Theatre Fanny Dorrit was engaged as a dancer, whilst her
Uncle Frederick played a clarionet in the orchestra. Bethlehem
Hospital is mentioned in The Uncommercial Traveller , where the
author implies the idea that the sane and tho insane are at least
equal in their dreams. Near Westminster Bridge is the site of
Astley’s Theatre, the scene of Kit’s exploit in The Old Curiosity
Shop . At Millbank David Copperlieid and Mr. Peggotty saved
poor Martha from a self-sought death. In Church Street lived
little Jenny Wren. Passing the venerable Abbey where Dickens
sleeps with his peers [and some others] we come to the Horse Guards,
by whose old clock Mark Tapley regulated the period of the inter-
view between Mary Graham and Martin Chuzzlewit in the park
near by. At Her Majesty’s Theatre, as reconstructed during the
early years of the last century, Mrs. Nickleby attended, by special
invitation of Sir Mulberry Hawk, when, by a prearranged coincid-
ence, Kate and the Wititterlys occupied the adjoining box (vide
Nicholas Nickleby , ch. xxvii.).

[Apropos to tho prisons, we may note a little work, In Jail with
Dickens , by Alfred Trumblo, editor of the American Collector ,
printed in America but published in London in 1896 by Suckling
& Galloway. Mr. Trumble describes Newgate, the Fleet, the
Marshalsea, the King’s Bench, tho New York 44 Tombs,” and
Philadelphia’s 44 Bastille,” and seems to have followed Dickens’s
footsteps very closely. As a frontispiece is given a reproduction
from an ojd (1780) print illustrating the destruction by the mob of
the King’s Bench Prison and House of Correction in St. George’s
Fields.]

XIII

THE INN’S OF DICKENS

Mr. Allbtjt, in his Rambles in Dickens Land , mentions the follow-
ing inns, which we have arranged alphabetically for easy reference.
Many of them, of course, are no longer in existence.

London

Bell Tavern, at the corfter of Carter Lane and Bell Yard. Copper-
fidd.

Black Lion, Whitechapel. Barnaby Rudgc.

Blue Bear, (?) Green Dragon, Leadenliall Market. Pickwick .
Boot Tavern, Cromer Street, Cray’s Inn Road. Barnaby Rudgc.
Bull Inn, (?) Bull and Anchor, near Cray’s Inn. Chuzzlewit.
Claridge's Hotel. Little Dorr it.

Cross Keys Inn, Wood Street, Cheapside. Great Expectations .
Crown Inn, corner of Beck Street and Upper James’s Street.
Nickleby.

Falcon Hotel, City. Edwin Drood.

Fox under the Hill, the site of which is now covered by the
Hotel Cecil. Sketches by Boz , Copper field , and (?) Chuzzlewit.
George and Vulture Inn, Castle Court. Pickwick.

Golden Cross Hotel, Charing Cross. Pickwick and Copperfield.
Horse and Groom, Portugal Street. Pickwick.

Hummuras, The, Covent Garden. Great Expectations.

Magpie and Stump, (?) The Old George the Fourth, Clare Market.
Ptc kwick

Old Cheshire Cheese, Ye. A Tale of Two Cities.

Osborn’s Hotel, now Adelphi Hotel. Pickwick.

Red Lion, Derby Street, Whitehall. Copperfield.

Red Lion, Be vis Marks. Old Curiosity Shop.

Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill. Nickleby.

Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, Limeliouse. Our Mutual Friend.
Sol’s Arms, (?) Old Ship Tavern, Chichester Rents. Bleak House.
Spaniards Inn, Hampstead. Pickwick.

Tavistock Hotel, Co vent Garden. Great Expectations.

Three Cripples, Hoi born. Oliver Ticist.

White Hart Inn, Borough. Pickwick.

White Horse Cellars, Piccadilly. Pickwick and Bleak Home.

256

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Wooden Midshipman, Minories. Dorribey .

Woods’ Hotel, Fumival’s Inn. Edwin Drood .

Canterbury

Fleur de Lys Hotel, George and Dragon Inn, and Queen’s Head
Inn. Copperfield.

Chigwell

Maypole Inn, (?) The King’s Heau. Barnaby Budge .

Cobham

The Leather Bottle Inn. Pickwick .

Dorking

Marquis of Granby. Pickwick.

Dover

The Royal George, (?) King’s Head Hotel. A Tale of Two Cities.
Greenwich

Quatermaine’s Ship Tavern. Our Mutual Friend.

Henley

Red Lion Inn. Our Mutual Friend.

Ipswich

White Horse Hotel. Pickwick.

Rochester

Bull Hotel. Pickwick.

The Crozier Hotel, (?) The Crown Hotel. Edwin Drood.
Yarmouth

Angel Hotel and Star Hotel. Copperfield.
the boot.

In a street off Gray’s Inn Road there stands an old Dickensian
building, which is very popular with sight-seeing Americans. It
occupies a site in Cromer Street, a dingy thoroughfare of compara-
tively modem buildings. It is a tavern called The Boot, and apart
from its interesting associations with Barnaby Budge , it is remark-
able as having been in the possession of the same family for nearly
one hundred and thirty years. The Boot was originally called the
Boat-house, a tributary of the Fleet Ditch flowing past the very
door ; but in course of years it became known as The Boot. The
present building dates from the year 1801, when the old tavern was
rebuilt. In 1631 a man named Thomas Cleave left an income of
£50 to be laid out in 13 penny loaves for distribution every week
among the poor people in the district. The property charged with
this annuity was The Boot, and the loaves are still given out every
Sunday at St. Pancras Church, Euston Road. — Daily Chronicle,
September 10, 1908,

THE INNS OF DICKENS.

257

THE BULL INN, ROCHESTER.

Situated on the south side of the High Street, within a short
distance of Rochester Bridge, the Bull and Victoria Hotel (to give
it its full designation) has an exceedingly unprepossessing frontage,
its only decorative feature being the Royal Arms over the entrance.
Why does the famous coaching-inn bear the double sign of the Bull
and Victoria ? It originated in this way : One stormy day at the
end of November 1830, the late Queen Victoria (then Princess),
with her mother the Duchess of Kent, stopped at the Bull ; they
were travelling to London from Dover, and the royal party, warned
of the possibility of their carriage being upset in crossing the bridge,
stayed at the hostelry all night, the apartment in which England’s
future Sovereign slept being the identical room previously allocated
to Mr. Tupman in Pickwick. — K 3.

THE MITRE AND THE CROZIER.

The Mitre at Chatham is historically interesting by reason of
the fact that Lord Nelson used to reside there when on duty at
Chatham, a room he occupied being known as “ Nelson’s Cabin.” In
the eighteenth chapter of The Mystery of Edwin Drood we find the
place disguised as The Crozier — “ the orthodox hotel ” at Cloister-
ham (i.e. Rochester) — and in The Holly-Tree it is thus directly
immortalised : “ There was an inn in the cathedral town where I
went to school, which had pleasanter recollections about it than any
of these. ... It was the inn where friends used to put up, and
where we used to go and see parents, and to have salmon and fowls
and be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign — the Mitre — and a bar
that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug.”
— K 3.

THE FOX UNDER TIIE HILL.

On the southern side of the Strand I saw last week still remaining
the entrance tc a long and dismal lane, which forty years ago ran
from the Strand to the river shore. The lane skirted the eastern
side of the Adelphi Dark Arches, and led to an old-fashioned river-
side public-house, The Fox under the Hill, described by Dickens in
one of his Sketches by Boz . The house, I think, was on the shore,
but in front was moored a barge with alcoves something like the old-
fashioned tea-gardens. By the side of the public-house a rickety
gangway led across moored barges to the pier. of the “ ’apenny boat/’
which plied between the Adelphi and London Bridge (the old-
fashioned steamers which performed the service being called, I
think, Venus, Jupiter , and Endeavour respectively). The building
of the great hotels on the Thames Embankment is causing the
disappearance of this and other old London landmarks. The curious
may find the entrance to the passage on the south side of the Strand
by the side of a restaurant nearly opposite the Adelphi Theatre. —
W. J. Fitzsimmons, in the Times, 'October 23, 1895.

258

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

THE GEORGE AND VULTURE.

East of Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, toward the City, is
to be found [1904] the George and Vulture, mentioned in Pickwick ,
existing to-day as “a very good old-fashioned and comfortable
house.” Its present name is Thomas’ Chop-house, and he who would
partake of the 44 real thing ” in good English fare, served on pewter
plates, with the brightest of steel knives and forks, would hardly fare
better than in this ancient house in St. Michael’s Alley. — M 2.

The George and Vulture was Mr. Pickwick’s favourite house* after
he had given up his Goswell Street apartments. Wo find him
arriving in very good old-fashioned and comfortable c; quarters,” after
his visit to Eatanswill — or rather to Ipswich. The old ruin is [1895]
in a corner to the left. A little door leads at once into the coffee-
room, as into a ship’s cabin, and a lit tie stair like a companion ladder,
confronting you, helps this association. There are the old “ boxes ”
and stalls, and the coats and hats hung up round, and the city
clerks busy at their lunch, u forty feeding like one.” A small arch-
way leads into the street beyond. As regards the George and
Vulture, 44 Boz ” falls into a slight mistake. At one time he speaks
of it as being situated in Sun Court ; but this is on the opposite side
of the street. At another time he describes it correctly as being in
George Yard . — F 4.

THE GOLDEN CROSS HOTEL.

The Golden Cross Hotel, Charing Cross, is connected closely with
the story of Little Em’lv, for here it was that David Coppcrfield
met Steerforth on his way to look about him — a meeting which led
to Steerforth’s first visit to Yarmouth, with its disastrous results.
I fear the present Golden Cros3 Hotel could not truthfully be
described as “ a mouldy sort of establishment in a close neighbour-
hood,” for the house has been remodelled and the neighbourhood
considerably cleared, but still there it is on the same site as it was
when David was shown into a small bed-chamber, which smelt like
a hackney coach and was shut up like a family vault ; where he w f as
still painfully conscious of his youth, for nobody stood in awe of him
at all.- — Charles W. Dickens, in [M unsay' s Magazine , September 1902.

king’s HEAD, BARNARD CASTLE.

At the King’s Head, Barnard Castle, Dickens made a brief stay,
and observed across the way, the name of “ Humphreys, clock-
maker,” over a shop door, this suggesting the title of] his next work,
Master Humphrey' s Clock . The King’s Head, in the Market Place,
Barnard Castle, has been enlarged since 1838, but the older portion
remains much as it was then. — K 3.

THE OLD LEATHER BOTTLE, C’OBHAM.

The inn is [1895] a welcome roadside place, with Mr. Pickwick
himself hung up aloft for the sign. The rooms within, notably Mr.

THE INNS OF DICKENS.

259

Tupman’s, are hung round with portraits, sketches, criticisms, all
referring to the inn. People who find themselves anywhere near
are bound to go and see it. What a contrast to the day when it
was pointed out to the writer by the genial Charles himself, on a
country w^alk ! It was then no more than a common country
“ shebeen .” — F 4.

THE MAGPIE AND STUMP.

With the disappearance of the last of the old bulk shops in
Gilbert’s passage, leading from Portugal Street into Clare Market,
goes also the George the Fourth Tavern at the corner, and the Black
Jack in Portsmouth Street, the St. Giles-in-the-Fields Board of
Works having just resolved to carry out the long-contemplated
widening of Portsmouth Street to .35 feet instead of the present
22 feet. When these works are taken in hand Black Jack Alley also
will disappear from the London Dire tor y — no great loss, perhaps,
because not one Londoner in a hundred can ever have heard of its
existence, and its fame as the residence of the real original Joe
Miller, on whom all the best jokes of the past hundred years have
been fathered, has long been overlaid with a newer stratum of
literary interest.

Students of Pickwick will not need to be reminded that either the
George the Fourth Tavern or the Black Jack w^as the original of the
Magpie and Stump in whose parlour Mr. Pickwick w r as told the “Story
of the Queer Client.” The Magpie and Stump, according to Dickens,
was “ situated in a court, happy in the double advantage of being
in the vicinity of Clare Market, and closely approximating to the
back of New Inn.” This description, supposing it to have been
really founded on any particular building, more nearly fits the
George the Fourth Tavern at the entrance to this sometime Walhalla
of rogues and vagabonds, Clare Market, than the Black Jack,
next door. It is a corner building, projecting over the narrow foot-
way, and supported by posts that spring from the kerbstones,
the very house above all others in the neighbourhood to have at-
tracted the novelist’s attention. The Black Jack, to the contrary,
is a very ordinary building, although its grimy frontage and heavily-
sashed windows become interesting when it is known that from one
of its first-floor windows Jack Sheppard, the darling of penny dread-
fuls, escaped by jumping into the street, with Jonathan Wild and
his Bow Street runners in hot pursuit. It is, perhaps, not surprising
that in thieving “ circles ” the house was afterwards known as “ The
Jump.” The Black Jack, it may be necessary to add, does not
owe its title to Sheppard ; and although it sounds dramatic, its
sense is the merest commonplace of old-time domestic currency,
being derived from the black leathern jacks (by which you are to
understand “ bottle ” to bo meant) that preceded bottles made of
glass. In many county museums these leathern jacks may still
be seen, and there is a fine collection of them at the Hospital of
Saint Cross, near Winchester . — Daily News , December 1 , 1896.

260

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

THE MAYPOLE INN, CHIGWELL.

It is not difficult to identify, in the old King’s Head at Chigypll,
the original of the Maypole Inn of Barnaby Budge , which, although
bearing no resemblance to Cattermole’s charming but fanciful
drawing, is replete with those ancient features that attract both
artist and archaeologist. — K 1.

Of the actual Dickens inns, perhaps, none is more vividly im-
pressed on the imagination than that of the Maypole, that fan-
tastic structure of Barnaby Rudge , the original of which is the King’s
Head at Cliigwell on the borders of Epping Forest. It was here
that Mr. Willet sat in his accustomed place, “ his eyes on the eternal
boiler.” “ Before he had got his ideas into focus, he had stared at
the plebeian utensil cjuite twenty minutes,” — all of which indicates
the minutiae and precision of Dickens's observations. This actual
copper, vouched for by several documents of attestation, with an old
chair which formerly stood in the Chester Room of the Maypole, is
to-day [1904] in the possession of Mr. Bransby Williams, of London,
an ardent enthusiast of all matters in connection with Dickens and
his stories. — M 2.

The place was said to have been built in the days of King Henry
vin. There w r as a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept
there one night white upon a hunting excursion, to wit in a certain
oak-panelled room with a deep bay w indow 7 ; but that next morning,
w'hile standing on a mounting block before the door, with one foot
in the stirrup, the virgin monarch had then and there boxed and
cuffed an unlucky page for some neglect of duty. — F 4.

THE RED LION INN, WHITEHALL.

This Dickens has given vitality to by the charming living
sketch of a little boy going in to buy a glass of “ stunning ale ” as a
treat in his days of penury. Who will forget the picture so ex-
quisitely touched ? “ I see us all three ” — the landlord had called

his wife to look at the little fellow — and she, good woman, he says,
“ stooped down and gave him a motherly kiss and his little twopence
back.” The story struck “ Boz ” himself as being worthy to stand,
and so he transferred it from his diary to his novel, hardly altering
a w ord. — F 2.

the saracen’s head, snow hill.

The Saracen’s Head Hotel, Snow 7 Hill, made memorable by
Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby , was finally closed on Saturday. The
hotel has been in existence for between three hundred and four
hundred years. According to Dickens’s story, Mr. Squeers, of
Dotheboys Hall, “ an academy for young gentlemen,” near Barnard
Castle, Yorkshire, used to visit the Saracen’s Head and there inter-
view the students who were to be “ accurately educated ” at his
school. In the days of mail coaches the hotel was of considerable

THE INNS OF DICKENS.

261

importance, being one of the recognised stopping - places. The
coaches passed through an archway under the hotel into the spacious
Courtyard. Visitors at the hotel were in the habit of collecting on
the balconies, which surrounded the courtyard, to watch the scenes
connected with the arrival and departure of the coaches.

Lord Nelson, when ho left his home as a youth to join the Navy,
broke his journey at the Saracen’s Head, and passed the night
in the historic building.

In Dick Tarlton's Jests it is referred to as “ The Saracen’s Head
without Newgate,” and Stow calls it “ a fair and large inn for
receipt of travellers,” which “hath to sign the Sarrazen’s Head.”
There are various accounts of the origin of the sign of the Saracen’s
Head. One is that it was set up as a compliment to the mother of
Thomas a Becket, who was the daughter of a Saracen. In Selden’s
Table Talk wo read : “ When our countrymen came home from
fighting with the Saracens . . . they pictured them with huge, big,
terrible faces (as you still see the sign of the Saracen’s Head is). ...”
— Daily Chronicle , July 5 and 7, 1909.

The Saracen’s Head at Snow Hill — a real thing in Dickens’s
day — where the impetuous Squeers put up during his visits to
London, has disappeared. It was pulled down when the Idolborn
Viaduct was built in 18G9, and the existing house of the same name
in no way merits the genial regard which is often bestowed upon it,
in that it is but an ordinary London “ pub ” which does not even
occupy the same site as its predecessor . — M 2.

the sahacen’s head, towcester.

. . . Stop for the night at the Saracen’s Head, Towcester — which
is not far from Rugby. The inn was an old posting one — though
the stables have since been altered, and indeed, rebuilt, to suit the
requirements of hunting men. It was a snug, comfortable place,
and as the Pickwickians descended and were shown into The Sun —
these quaint names for rooms still linger in a few old houses — we
feel tempted to envy the party at their cosy dinner. The name,
however, has been changed, oven before the date of “ Boz’s ”
description, for, as Superintendent Norman informs me, it has
become the Po inf ret Arms — as is shown by entries in a constable’s
old account book — the inn being described in the year 1830 as the
Saracen’s Head, and in the next year as the Pomfret Arms. “ Boz,”
therefore, must have been trusting to his recollections of some
seven or eight years before. — F 4.

THE SOL’S ARMS.

No doubt your roaders have road in the papers that the original
of The Sol’s Arms can only be seen for a few days longer. I
went to have a last look at it the other day — The Old Ship, at
the corner of Chichester Rents (western side of Chancery Lane).
Within a couple of doors Miss Elite may have lived in her garret with

262

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

her birds ; possibly in Star Yard. — W. J. Fitzsimmons, in the
Times , October 23, 1895.

THE SPANIARDS.

,1 have often wondered why it was that The Spaniard of Hamp-
stead was introduced into Pickwick , not the Jack Straw’s Castle
which he knew so well. I fancy the reason was that The Spaniard
was better adapted scenically to Mrs. Bardell’s arrest than the
Jack Straw’s Castle, for there were the garden, arbours, alcoves, etc.;
and further, The Spaniard — how and when has it become plural
nowadays : Spaniards ? — was more suited to Mrs. Bardell . — F 2.

THE TWO BREWERS.

A public -house in the neighbourhood of Limehouse Church,
The Two Brewers, is supposed to be the original of that referred to
by Dickens as The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, “ a dropsical old
house,” as he called it, like so many old-world houses, all but falling
down, if judged by appearances, but actually not in the least danger
of it . — M 2.

THE UNICORN, BOWES,

The old coaching-house where this memorable interview [be-
tween John Browdie and Dickens — The Yorkshire Tour , 1838] is
believed to have taken place was the still-existing Unicorn at
Bowes.— K 3.

THE WHITE HART.

Between Mr. Weller, of Ramsgate, and Sam Weller, boots at the
White Hart Inn, in the Borough, there is a great apparent gap, but it
is bridged over by the circumstance that the famous hostelry, after
a spell of life as a public-house, has been transformed into the
u 4 Sam Weller ’ Social Club.” The galleries above the outer court-
yard — familiar in Hablot Browne’s illustrations — have been removed,
and the doorways which led on to them boarded up.

The kitchen at the top of the house is, almost to every' board on
the ceiling, as it w'as in the time of Dickens and Sam Weller. In
one of the rooms there are the posts of an early Victorian bedstead,
and these Mr. Kendall, in a strict utilitarian spirit, proposes to
convert into sets of draughtsmen. To some members and visitors
the most interesting curios of the club will be a series of six small oil
paintings of Dickens’s characters, which Mr. Kendall picked up
cheap in a Borough shop and had framed. They are unsigned, and
obviously the w r ork of an amateur or an artist with slight training,
but with a most delicate sense of colour. — Daily Chronicle, Sep-
tember 30, 1909.

The inn we regarded with most affection was the Old White
Hart in the Borough. It used to be a Sunday’s recreation with us
to wander off into the Borough and call up old fancies. Everything

263

THE INNS OF DICKENS.

■m

favoured. Many will recall the time, some twenty years since,
when the street was full of the old galleried inns. We “ mind the
tiihe 55 when the Tabard itself still stood. — F 4.

WHITE HORSE CELLARS.

A few years ago we still had our White Horse Cellars in Piccadilly.
The familiar animal himself “ ramped it ” — like his brother at
Ipswich — well over the pavement. There were steps up, and the
sanded floor, and the crudely furnished rooms, one on each side of
the door. Below these was the door leading to the subterranean
regions. This was much its aspect in the old Pickwickian days ;
it was used as a parcel office. Then came the coach service, and
lip to some four or five years ago it was a cheerful sight towards six
o’clock to see the coaches driving up, and hear the horns winding
out afar off. — F 4.

woods’ hotel.

Woods’ Hotel, in Furnival’s Inn, Hoi born, has been demolished,
the property having been acquired, it is understood, by the Pruden-
tial Assurance Company from the Society of Lincoln’s Inn by
purchase. The demolition extends to three houses in Greville
Street at the rear, and one in Leather Lane, to which latter
street a part of the hotel buildings also have a frontage. The inn
and the hotel were built in 1818-19 by Henry Peto — whose
statue (1830) is in the square — and in 1883-84 the hotel, of
which Woods was proprietor during fifty years, was enlarged
with additional rooms erected, after the designs of Messrs. Isaacs
& Florence, on the site of two or three houses in Greville Street ;
three years afterwards the Assurance Company extended their
premises by taking adjacent sites in Brooke and Greville Streets,
Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, It. A., being their architect. The old inn,
excepting its hall, was pulled down and rebuilt temp. Charles I. ;
its Ilolborn front, of fine brickwork, with pilasters, has been attri-
buted to Inigo Jones. The hall, which remained until 1818, had
over its door, facing south, a tablet inscribed “ E P C 1688.” Stow
mentions a Sir William Furnival, Kilt., as seised of two messuages
and thirteen shops in Holborn, in 6 Ric. it. That property passed
to Thomas Nevill, younger brother of Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland,
on his marriage with Joan, daughter of William, Lord Furnival.
Their eldest* daughter and co-heir Maud, married the redoubtable
Sir John Talbot, who was summoned to Parliament in 1409 as
“ Johannes Talbot de Furnyvall,” and was created, 1442, Earl of
Shrewsbury. Their descendant, Francis, fifth Earl, sold it for
£120, by a deed dated December 16, 1 Ed. vr., to Edward Gryffyn,
Solicitor-General, and others, “ to the use of the Society of Lincoln’s
Inn ; ” but Herbert tells us that Fumival’s Inn is first noticed as a
law seminary in its steward’s account book, written circa 9 Henr.
iv., and that Lincoln’s Inn granted a lease at £3, 6s. 8d. yearly to
the Principal and Fellows of Furnival’s Inn. Ilis volume "contains

264

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

plates of the hall, interior and exterior, and of the main facade.
Sir Thomas Moore was reader here for three years and longer. The
arms of the Inn were, argent a bend between six martlets gules
(Fumivall of Hertfordshire) within a border of the second. Charles
Dickens lived for a while at No. 12 ; the rooms he occupied for some
period after his marriage, and where Thackeray called upon him
with a proposal to illustrate Pickwick, are at No. 15, on the third
floor. — Builder , March 1895.

XIV

SCENES OF THE NOVELS AND STORIES

In The Real Dickens Land, by Mr. and Mrs. H. Snowden Ward,
the lirst chapter, dealing with Dickens’s childhood (1812-23),
gives us scenes in Portsmouth, London, Chatham, and first glimpses
of Gad’s Hill. The years 1823-31 are described as the boyhood and
youth of Dickens in London, and a third period, 1831-36, deals
with his newspaper work and Sketches by Boz , with scenes in London,
Ipswich, Bath, etc. The writing of Pickwick occupied the years
1830-37, and again we have scenes in London, besides a great
number of local allusions to Rochester, Ipswich, Bury, Bath, etc.
For the next two years, 1837-39, Dickens was editor of Bentley" s
Miscellany , and writing Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

London, the Midlands, Tong, Chigwell, etc., and the writing of
Master Humphrey" s Clock , The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby
Budge are associated with the years 1840-41. Tong is usually
understood to be the original of the village where Little, Nell died.
Dickens’s first American tour, American Notes and Martin Chuzzle -
wit fill up the next two years, 1842-44. Amesbury, and not
Alder bury, is the village now r assigned as the place of Mr. Peck-
sniff’s practice.

44 Anyone who really studies the story of Chuzzlewit, w r ith ord-
nance map before him and a knowledge of the old coach routes,
w ill find that Amesbury, some eight miles to the north of Salisbury,
answers in every detail save that its church is described as having
a spire (really it has a square tower), just as Dickens talks of the
towers of Salisbury Cathedral coming into view, although he well
knew that its single tall taper spire is its great characteristic. Though
Amesbury has no Blue Dragon, it has a George Inn. The unsuit-
ability of Amesbury for an architect’s home is specially provided for
by Dickens making Pecksniff a teacher, and distinctly stating that
‘ of his architectural doings, nothing was clearly known, except
that he had never built or designed anything.’

“ There are two or three coach -roads, as are necessitated by
the story, one running from London to Salisbury without touching
Amesbury ; the other running right through Amesbury and over
Salisbury Plain for the west country. Ignorance of this latter
coach route has led some Dickens topographers into difficulties ;
but with it everything becomes clear. The turnpike house exists

‘205

266

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

* *

at which Tom left his box, and the churcn at which he played the
organ is a fine old structure, and though there is no walk through a
wood from the house we have selected as Pecksniff’s, there is a path
through a little plantation which would make quite a short cut to
the north-west corner of the churchyard. There is not a ‘ descent
of two steps on the inside ’ of the bedroom behind the Dragon, but
one of the rooms in the George has a descent of one step, quite
enough to trip an imwary person.”

In another chapter Mr. and Mrs. Ward deal with the Christmas
books, Pictures from Italy , Dombey and Son , and David Cupper field,
and these cover the years 1843-1850. “ An old knocker on a door

in Craven Street, Strand, is believed to be the one that suggested
the fancy of Scrooge’s knocker (in A Christmas Carol) changing into
Marley’s face ; but we understand that the request of a photo-
grapher for permission to photograph the knocker led the lady
of the house to have it removed, and stored in her banker’s safe
deposit.” The home where Tiny Tim cried “ God bless us, every
one,” cannot be identified. Other chapters deal with Bleak House ,
Hard Times , Little Dorr it, and the later works from 1850 onwards,
and the localities alluded to in them.

THE DOVER ROAD.

Under the title of “ Dickens and the Dover Road,” Mr. Walter
Dexter contributed to CasscWs Magazine (February 1904) a sort
of Dickens Baedeker to the London Road, beginning with St.
George’s Church in the Borough, near the site of Marshalsea Prison,
and running through Greenwich, Blackheath, Shooter’s Hill, and
Gravesend on to the cliffs. One spot curiously combining associa-
tions of the pathos and humour of Dickens may be mentioned :

“ At the end of the village of Chalk, on the right-hand side of
the Dover Road, is the cottage in which the young novelist spent
his honeymoon, and often, in later years, when he had come to
live at Gad’s Hill Place, he would, Forster tells us, * walk through the
marshes to Gravesend, return by Chalk Church, and stop always to
have greeting with a comical old monk who, for some incompre-
hensible reason, sits carved in stone, cross-legged, with a jovial
pot, under the porch of that sacred edifice.’ ”

After taking the reader through Rochester and Canterbury, Mr.
Dexter ends bis journey at the cliffs of Dover.

THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD.

All down the Portsmouth road about Esher you see traces of
Dickens’s quiet notice of everything; in poor Smike’s journey with
Nicholas Nickleby ; in the names of Weller, tho Marquis of Granby,
and the like ; as in later years you could trace his names in the
Hampstead Road, as Sol’s Arms, in his long walks from Tavistock
House round by Highgate and over Hampstead Heath back again. —
Extract from William Howitt’s memoranda, written in 1837,
from Mary Ilowitt : an Autobiography .

SCENES OF THE NOVELS AND STORIES. 267

IN HERTFORDSHIRE. *

The earliest allusion to this delightful English county in the writ-
ings of our favourite novelist is to be found in Pickwick. Although
the identity is somewhat veiled, there can be no doubt that in the
story of “The Goblin who stole the Sexton/’ which opens with the
words, “ In an old abbey town, down in this part of the country ”
(that is, the south), Dickens had St. Albans in his mind ; while, to
corroborate this contention, there is a fairly accurate representation
of the famous Abbey Church in “ Phiz’s ” illustration of the scene.

The first direct allusion to Hertfordshire is discoverable in the
tragic story of Oliccr Twist . It will be remembered that the unfor-
tunate hero, escaping from the tyranny of his master (the under-
taker, to whom he had been apprenticed), directed his flight to
London. As Peterborough has been identified as the scene of
Oliver’s birth and early misfortunes, he would, starting from that
point, necessarily pass through Hertfordshire (on his way to the
metropolis) by the Great North Road, making his first acquaintance
with the county at JEtoyston, and then tramping through Baldock,
Stevenage, Welwyn, and Hatfield. It was early on the seventh day
that he “ limped slowly into the little town of Barnet,” where he
found the window-shutters closed and the street empty, for “ not
a soul had awakened to the business of the day,” the brightness of
the morning only serving to remind the boy of his own lonely and
desolate condition as, with bleeding feet and covered with dust,
he rested upon a cold doorstep. It’ was here that Oliver was
accosted by the Artful Dodger, who ingratiated himself by treating
the hungry lad to “ a fourpenny bran ” (that is, a modicum of ham
with bread) and a drink, after which they proceed to London together,
en route for Fa-gin’s “ Academy.”

We read in the same story that Bill Sikes also favoured Hertford-
shire with his presence. After murdering the erring but faithful
Nancy, that notorious ruffian endeavoured to evade the legal con-
sequences of his act by escaping into the country, and, after much
indecision, eventually shaped his course for Hatfield.

Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, an enthusiastic student of Dickens’s writ-
ings, has endeavoured to trace the exact route taken by Little Nell
and her Grandfather in the Old Curiosity Shop. In the tale this
is merely hinted at, but there is sufficient internal evidence to justify
Mr. Fitzgerald’s conclusions that when the two pilgrims left London
and its miseries behind them they wended their way northward,
making somewhat indirectly for Warwick (with its racecourse),
Coventry, Birmingham, etc*. Thus they would traverse the western
part of Hertfordshire. Mr. Fitzgerald has always fancied that the
churchyard w hore Nell and her aged companion met the “ Punch
and Judy men ” was that of Bushey, near Watford ; the old
church, when he first saw it, reminded him very much of one of
Cattermolo’s illustrations in the story, and the novelist has exactly
caught the tone and pleasant charm of Bushey itself.

In Bleak House Hertfordshire plays a conspicuous part, for the
house whence this striking romance derives its title w r as located by

SCENES OF THE ^NOVELS AND STORIES. 269

Dickens in the immediate neigh bojurhood of St. Albans. Richard
Carstone, Ada Clare, and Esther Summerson, on their way to the
home of Mr. Jamdyco, travelled by postchaise via Barnet, where,
while waiting for the horses to bo fed, they “got a long fresh walk
over a common and an old battlefield, before the carriage came up.
These delays so protracted the journey that the short day was
spent, and the long night had closed in, before wo came to Saint
Albans ; near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.”

So carefully minute is Dickens’s presentment of Bleak House
that one must fain believe such a place actually existed, and that
all its structural peculiarities were quite familiar to the novelist.
On the outskirts of St. Albans there stands a quaintly picturesque
residence which, by no great stretch of the imagination, may be
considered as the actual prototype : indeed, it has been rechristened
“Bleak House” by the present owner. It may, of course, be
reasonably argued that Dickens, assuming the right of a novelist,
may have merely transferred to Hertfordshire the location of the
building he had so elaborately portrayed.

We read in David Copper/ield that one of Steerforth’s Oxford
friends lived near St. Albans, but there is no clue to the exact locality.

During a visit to Knebworth in 1801, Charles Dickens (accom-
panied by Mr. [afterwards SirJ Arthur Helps, some time the Queen’s
Secretary) called upon the Hermit of Hertfordshire — a most extra-
ordinary character, locally known as “ Mad Lucas,” . . . immortal-
ised by Dickens as Mr. Mopes, in the Christinas number of All
the Year Round, 1801 , entitled “ Tom Tiddler's Oround.” . . . The
Hertfordshire village so minutely described by Dickens in the early
portion of this Christmas number is probably meant for Stevenage. —
F. G. Kitton, in Good J Yards, March 1890.

ROCHESTER.

Rochester is to be found, under the name of Winglebury, in the
Sketches. “ Boz ” describes it as being exactly forty-five miles
and three-quarters from Hyde Park Corner. “It has a long,
straggling, quiet High Street, with a great black and white clock at
a small red Town Hall half-way up, a market-place, a cage, an
Assembly Room, a church, a bridge, a chapel, a theatre, a library,
an inn, a pump, and a post-office.” Could anything be more
accurate or recognisable ? Ho pictures the inn of the place. The
Winglebury Arms . — F 2.

riCKWICKIAN SCENES.

Much speculation has been exercised as to the locality of Eatan-
swill, and in the History of Pickwick l could not arrive at a clear and
certain solution. I have, however, been assured by Mr. Alfred
Morrison, tho well-known collector, that Eatanswill was Ipswich,
that his father was one of the candidates, and that Dickens was
there in person. The writer makes a burlesque pretence of haVing
searched the road-books for Eatanswill, and laments his want of

270

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

success ; and, like Mr. Pickwick, he also seems to have “ lined out ”
the word “ Norwich.” The Pickwickians arrived there “ late in
the evening,” after a day’s journey, in just about the time that
would be taken to reach Ipswich by coach. Mr. Pickwick’s journey
from Eatanswill to Bury St. Edmunds, in chase of Captain Marshall,
also shows that Ipswich was intended . — F 4.

[Charles Dickens, the younger (Pall Mall Magazine , July 1896),
speaks of Norwich as the original of Eatanswill.]

Christ Church Hall, Spital fields, where a bazaar was held on 28th
April 1909 in connection with Spitalfields Parish Church, is the hall
in which Sam Weller and his venerable parent witnessed the re-
markable meeting of the u Committee of the Brick Lane Branch of
the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association.”
It was at this meeting that the tea -drinking propensities of the
“ Brick Lane Branch brothers and sisters ” alarmed the elder
Weller, who declared that he saw a young ’oornan “ a-swellin’
wisibly before my worry eves.” Subsequently, on the popular
arrival of the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, the elder Weller had a “ small
settlement ” with that gentleman.

The late Mr. Hughes, treasurer of Birmingham, and my old friend,
really discovered Manor Farm in the shape of Cob Tree, Sandling,
not very far from Maidstone. The evidence for its identity is
striking enough. If we compare it with the two sketches in Pickwick
(“ Mr. Pickwick Slides ” and “ The Arbour,” which furnish both
front and back views) we shall recognise the likeness. Both houses
are two storeys high, have wings and gabled roofs. But what
settles the point is that there is a pond exactly in front of Cob Tree,
and also a rookery. In Dickens’s time it would seem that the
owners were a family of Spongs, and a modern commentator has
contended that they were the originals of the hospitable Wardles.
This may be so, and logically follows from the identification of Cob
Tree 'with Dingley Deli. However, this may be assumed as a cer-
tainty, from the reality of “ Boz’s ” description, that he himself was
a guest at the Manor Farm Christmas festivities. The Spongs had
also some connection with The Bull. “ Boz’s ” knowledge of Kent
in these days was certainly extraordinary. Even his most casual
allusion is always correct, and he is constantly introducing some-
thing local, as a person in real life might do. Thus, the clergyman
at Dingley Dell, when giving “ The Madman’s Story ” to Mr.
Pickwick, spoke of “ our county lunatic asylum ; ” and, as Mr.
Hammond Hall points out, the asylum is only a few miles from
Cob Tree — a further point in the identity. Two of the best ghost
•stories that we have are to be found in Pickwick — that of Gabriel
Grub, and of the spectral mail-coaches at the close of the book. An
abbey, introduced into the picture at the front, has caused sgme
difficulty and confusion, as it clearly represents that of St. Albans
in Hertfordshire. Now, old Wardle speaks of an old abbey church
“ down here ” — that is, in Kent. There was at the time, as Mr.
Hammond Hall notes, some abbey near Maidstone, but this was an

272

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

abbey <c in being.” One might suggest the abbey church of Minster,
though that is a good way off. Tuere is also Mayfield. — F 2.

We are assured by the same authority ( Suffolk Times and M er-
cury) that 44 Boz,” then actually engaged on the opening chapters
of Pickwick , stayed at The Great White Horse in Tavern Street
for two or threo weeks, and it has been reasonably surmised that
the night adventure with 44 the middle-aged lady in the yellow
curl-papers,” ascribed to Mr. Pickwick, was a veritable experience
of the young author himself . — K 3.

In the High Street, Rochester, is Eastgate House, which is en-
shrined in Edwin Brood. There is a shadowy image of this Eastgate
House in Pickwick , where Mr. Pickwick, hurrying off to Bury on
one of his quixotic expeditions, hides himself in the garden of the
young ladies’ boarding-school. This venerable mansion is an
almost perfect and original specimen of the old English house. One
might have hoped that when it was niched into Edwin Brood , and
called so quaintly 44 The Nuns’ House,” a change might have come
about its unhappy case. But no ; it still mouldered on, until at
last came the happy day when it occurred to the Rochester City
Fathers that it was a treasure for their town. It has now, there-
fore, been thoroughly and judiciously repaired and set in order as
the town museum. One or two room-; have been set apart and
devoted to the memory of Dickens. Since Dickens’s death — or
some time before, I am not certain which — the house was actually
a young ladies’ school . — F 2.

PYRCROFT HOUSE, OF OLIVER TWIST.

Everyone has read the truly picturesque account in Oliver Twist
of Sikes’s burglarious adventure at Chertsey — the long night travel
and the day’s march, wdien the time seems to drag on wearily.
They started at daylight — Sikes and Oliver — from near Bethnal
Green, making their w'ay to Hyde Park Corner, where they got a
lift to Isleworth ; then walked to Hampton, where they got another
lift through Sudbury on to Shepperton, and thence to Chertsey.
After waiting till midnight at one of their 44 lays,” the trio — for they
had been joined by Toby Crackit — set off for Chertsey, through
the main street of which they hurried, and 44 cleared the town
as the church bells struck two.” 44 Quickening their pace, they
turned up a road on the left hand. After walking about a quarter
of a mile, they stopped before a detached house surrounded by a
wall.” It will be seen how minute 44 Boz ” is in his description, by
which nearly sixty years later we are enabled to identify it.

On one beautiful summer’s Sunday I paid a visit t6 Chertsey, in
search of this old mansion. It was difficult to find Pyrcroft House.
It was clearly, however, beyond Chertsey — that is, not on the London
side. Going on rather blindly towards the country in the direction
of St. Ann’s, where Fox lived, an inviting, well-wooded district,
I came to a small village, facing which was aline old rubicund garden
wall. This, being out of perpendicular and threatening to fall, had

SCENES OF THE NOVELS AND STORIES. 273

bee* vigorously buttressed up. Within, and touching the road
with its flank, was the house, a beautiful Georgian specimen, of ripe
plum-coloured bricks and sound design ; indeed, it suggested Gad’s
Hill in pattern. A country wench, who was at one of the doors,
being asked the name could only murmur, “ I dunnoo ; ” but an
intelligent, wizened old lady looking over her gate said, “ Whoy,
that be Pyreroft.” Thus had I stumbled on the very place. Fair
as it was in front, with its fine enclosed garden at the back, there
were all the little encrusted outhouses and buildings which were so
likely to attract Mr. Sikes. It was certainly the house ; and what

supplied conviction was the rich bit of meadow-land which came up
close behind. — Percy Fitzgerald, in the Magazine of Art , 1895.

NICHOLAS NIOKLEBY AND T1IE YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS.

The old Portsmouth theatre, the scene of Nicholas’s early
triumphs on the stage, was destroyed many years ago ; it occupied
the site of the Cambridge Barracks. The story is current in Ports-
mouth that Dickens called upon the manager at the old theatre
and actually asked for a small part . — K 3.

In your article of 12th June, on the coronation number of the
Times , telling your readers that they would be presented gratis
with a reproduction in facsimile of the Times of Friday, 29th June,
1838, you call attention to two educational advertisements as con-
taining a hint of some of the abuses which Dickens was already
setting himself to scourge. “ These are of schools — one in York-
shire— at which youths are boarded and instructed according to
age, including clothes, books, and other necessaries. No extras and
no vacations.”

274

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

I respectfully submit that you might have put this more strongly,
and that these must be the originals from which Dickens made up
Mr. Squeers’s card. Nicholas Niclcleby was published in 1839. It
seems to me clear that Mr. Squeers’s card was based on them. It
will be found on page 20 of the original edition. Please print all
three.

“ Education. — At Win ton Hall, near Kir by-Stephen, in West-
moreland, young gentlemen are boarded, clothed, provided with
books, and educated, by Mr. Tvvycross, in whatever their future
prospects may require, at £20 per annum. There are no extras nor
vacations. Prospectuses and references may be had at Peele's
Coffee-House, Fleet Street, where Mr. T. attends daily, between
12 and 2 o’clock.”

“ Education. — At Mr. Simpson’s Academy, Earby [sfc in original,
query misprint for “ Easby near Richmond, Yorkshire, youth
are boarded, and instructed by Mr. S. and proper assistants in
whatever their future prospects may require, at 20 and 23
guineas a year, according to age, including clothes, books, and
other necessaries. No extras and no vacations. Cards with refer-
ences to be had from Mr. S., who attends from 12 to 2 o’clock
daily at The Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill. Conveyance by steam
vessel weekly.”

“ Education. — At Mr. Wackford Squeers' s Academy, Dotheboys
Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge, in
Yorkshire, youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with
pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all
languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry,
astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single
stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every branch
of classical literature. Terms twenty guineas per annum. No
extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr. Squeers is in town
and attends daily, from one to four, at The Saracen’s Head, Snow
Hill.”

Dickens added to the advertisements in your issue of 1838. But
the leading principles are in all three — namely, £20 a year for
clothes, books, and education ; no extras, no vacations ; and both
Mr. Simpson and Mr. Squeers, the two Yorkshire schoolmasters,
“ attended daily at The Saracen’s Head.”— Walter Wren, in the
Times , July 24, 1897.

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.

We find the author, when he was describing the beautiful church
at Tong, making allusion to some martyred lady whose remains
had been collected in the night from four of the city gates. Though
he does not name the city, it shows that Coventry was in his thoughts,
as it is stated in the old guides that four of its many gates were
standing in the early part of the century . — F 4.

His impressions of the Black Country are vividly portrayed in
the forty-third and succeeding chapters of The Old Curiosity Shop,

SCENES OF THE NOVELS AND STORIES. 275

fl#d there is good reason to suppose that a portion at least of the
itinerary of the pilgrimage of Little Nell and her Grandfather, after
their flight from London to escape from the evil influence of Quiip,
was based upon his own tour, undertaken two years previously. —

The “ Old Curiosity Shop ” in Portsmouth Street, Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, is paragraphed to disappear. But at least seven years ago
its destruction was announced. I shall be sorry to see its vacant
place, for the house is old and quaint, and many visitors to London,

■ i

t'U

“i.'TTLR N’KI.T.'s COTTAGE,” TO NO, SHROPSHIRE

especially Americans, receive from it a genuine Dickensian thrill.
Yet the house is not genuine Dickens. Where, then, was the real
shop ? Those who know most do not know. Dickens tells us
in the last chapter of his novel that 44 the old house had long ago
been pulled down, and a tine broad road was in its place.” The
story goes that he personally identified the real “ Old Curiosity Shop”
as No. 10 Green Streot, Leicester Square, a house which was pulled
down in the construction of Charing Cross Road. And yet he
wrote of the shop as 44 in the City.” A shop in Fetter Lane had City
claims, but it, too, is gone ; and tho identification of the spot
sacred to Little Nell is now hopeless.— T.iVs IFceHy, '^August 28,

276

SCENES OF THE NOVELS AND STORIES. 277

THE EDEN OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.

Eden has been identified as a scattered settlement situated on the
Mississippi River at a point half-way between Hannibal, Missouri,
and Quincy, Illinois, and was called Marion City. The ambitious
minds that planned it designed that it should be the greatest city
known to the ancient or the modern world ; but because of the
unexpected operations of nature, and other events which had not
been considered, that city never grew to more consequence than that
of a mere country village, where the inhabitants constantly trudged
about in mud and water. The founder was a man named William
Muldrow, and was possessed of splendid maps, unbounded im-
pudence, and ready speech. By these means he disposed of numerous
lots in this miserable swamp, which ultimately became almost
completely deserted. —77/ e Bookman (New York), vol. ix.

A DOMBEY LANDMARK.

Uncle Sol’s Wooden Midshipman is an almost living character in
Dombey and Non, and shows the author’s art in vivifying inanimate
things for the purpose of his story. Everyone has a sort of affection
for this little figure. Up to the year 1881 he was flourishing, and
taking his observations at a house in Leadenhall Street, nearly
opposite the Old India House. Mr. Ashby Sterry found him out.
The figuro was at the door of Messrs. Norie & Wilson, an old-
established linn of nautical instrument makers. At one time the
little man used to get his knuckles severely abraded by passing
porters carrying loads, and was continually sent to have a fresh set
of knuckles provided. Americans offered to buy . im. However,
his house was demolished, and the firm removed to No. 156 Minories,
w here he is now [1895] to be seen as fresh and lively as ever. — F 4.

DAVID COPTERFIELD.

There have been several houses in Canterbury suggested as
Wickfield’s. There is one nearly opposite the Catholic Church,
which has always been used, so runs the tradition, as a lawyer’s
office. It is a two-storeyed house of brick and timber and lime-
washed front. The main objection is the absence of gables and
carved woodwork in the front, and the fact that there is no turret-
room. . . . An enterprising clerk, some years ago, carved 44 U.
Keep ” on his desk in one of the downstairs rooms, and the name is
shown to this day to American and other tourists, some of whom
believe it to be genuine. — F 2.

I have seen in (American) print a triumphant account of the
absolute identification of Miss Betsey Trotwood's house on the cliff
at Dover, the principal evidence in the case relating to the green
over which Miss Trot wood believed herself to have jurisdiction as
regarded the incursions of donkeys ; and very much impressed I
should have been, no doubt, with the writer’s industry and in-
genuity, if I had not unfortunately happened to know of my own

278

INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT TONG, SHROPSHIRE

SCENES OF THE NOVELS AND STORIES. 279

knowledge that he was altogether wrong. The Trotwood donkey-
fights did not take place at Dover at all, but at Broadstairs ; where
a certain Miss Strong — a charming old lady who was always most
kind to me as a small boy, and to whose cakes and tea I still look
back with fond and unsatisfied regret — lived in a little double-
fronted cottage in the middle of Nuckeirs Place, on the sea-front,
firmly convinced of her right to stop the passage of donkeys, along
the road in front of her door. — Charles Dickens, the younger, in the
Pall Mall Magazine, July 1896.

Tnere is not much to be seen of the Yarmouth of Dan’l and Little
Em’ly, of ’Am and David and the seductive Steerforth. Perhaps
at dusk one can imagine, at the south end of the Marine Parade, a
black upturned barge or smack, with little windows and a slim iron
tunnel doing duty as a chimney. If so, the gifted visionary may
also hear the deep tumultuous roar of Dan’l Peggotty singing “ When
the stormy winds do blow, do blo*v, do blow,” or Little Em’ly’s
sweet laughter, or Steerforth warbling tears from the eyes of his
companions. But now the pilgrim to that spot — then solitary at
the upper reach of a tract of sand and grass between the Wellington
Pier and the South Battery — may much more likely see clusters of
exuberant trippers, or hear the strains of the Jewish harp or the
fell dissonance of the inflated Teuton. There are many of the
kindred of Miss Mowcher, but that gay and discursive immortal
never visited any inn in Yarmouth save that in the Yarmouth of
Dickens’s imagination.

Many Barkises may be willing : the breed, to meet in a ramble,
is extinct. Yet, behind the town, away by the Lowestoft Road, or
by Somorloyton Park to Blunderston (it was at Blunderstone
Rookery Y r iearage, it will be remembered, that Mrs. Copperfield
bore her son David) there are still bits of East Anglian country
unchanged since the days Barkis guided his carrier’s cart (with the
horse that could not be driven, but only gradually induced) through
green lanes and pastoral bj’ways. And the visitor who lias reserved
David Copper field to read or re read at Yarmouth will find certain
pleasure in many passages in that enduringly fascinating romance,
remarkable alike for their truth in local colour and for their charm
in swift and deft impression. And here, too, Dickens showed what
he could do as u a marine artist.” Ttie description of the great
storm on the German Ocoan that brought back the drowned seducer
to the home he had ruined, and, with him, his would-be generous
and unknowing saviour Ham, is one of the finest things of its kind
in literature. — $ 7.

BLEAK HOUSE LANDMARKS.

The castle (Rockingham) is situated on a breezy eminence over-
looking the valley of the Welland, which river overflows occasion-
ally and floods the surrounding country, suggesting the watery
Lincolnshire landscape described in the second chapter of Bleak
House . At the end of the terrace is the New Walk, corresponding

280

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

with the Ghost’s Walk at Chesney Wold, and there is a sundial in
the garden, also referred to in the story. After passing under the
archway (the remains of a former castle), a general view is obtained
of the north front of the mansion, one of the principal apartments
in which is the long drawing-room, the veritable drawing-room of
Chesney Wold, except that the lireplace is surmounted by a carved
overmantel instead of a portrait, while the family presentments
at Rockingham are in the hall, and not in the drawing-room, as
related of those at Chesney Wold . — K 3.

If you have an}' business in White Hart Street, Drury Lane, you
will probably make haste, for it is not a desirable locality. Yet
there is a reason why you should turn aside into an uninviting alley
on your left as you come from Catherine Street. The place has a
fascination of its own ; for you suddenly remember a certain ‘ k reek-
ing little tunnel of a court ” which gives access to the iron gate of
“ a hemmed -in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, a beastly scrap
of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination and a
Caflie would shudder at/’

Yes, this is the old churchyard of Bleak House, where Lady
Dedlock’s lover was buried ; and where she was found dead, with
one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate, and seeming to
embrace it.” There have been a good many changes since then.
Perhaps the Cali're would not shudder now'; for the gate* is gone,
and with it “ the heaps of dishonoured graves and stones.” Here
and there against the wall you notice a tombstone with an illegible
inscription ; but the most conspicuous objects are a swing and a
hobby-horse. An excellent public body lias turned the spot into
a playground, and groups of children are enjoying themselves with
sufficient energy to convince you that a London street urchin is
sometimes young. They are u turning to mirth all things of
earth,” and especially the very grim earth over which they arc
gambolling ; while a melancholy man, in a jersey jacket and a cap
adorned with the initials of the excellent public body, surveys the
scene without much apparent interest. To you he addresses him-
self promptly ; and then you are aware that he has a very weather-
beaten aspect, especially about the right eye*, and a certain inde-
finable touch of discipline which denotes the old soldier. He
mentions the name of Dickens, which is evidently the formula of
introduction ; but if you imagine that lie is going to talk about
Jo and the nameless pauper who was laid to rest under your feet,
you are vastly mistaken. There is no chance here of an interesting
argument about that very self-conscious young woman Esther
Summerson, and it k no use going into the question of Harold
Skimpole and Leigh Hunt. “ You are looking at my eye, sir,” says
the old soldier — “ makes me look like a blackguard, don’t it V ”
You politely deprecate any such notion. “ Oh, it ain’t pretty, I
know,” he says ; “ but it shows you the sort of thing I have to put
up with in this hole. I had to turn a boy out yesterday for making
a row, and ho let me have it in the eye with a stone, that’s what it
is to be caretaker here.” Probably your mind goes back to Durdles

282

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

in Edwin Drood, and to the fiend of a boy who used to pursue him
with stones and a hideous refrain of which the only line you re-
member is,- “ When I ketches him out after ten. ,, The old soldier
suspects that your attention is wandering ; for he says rather
sharply, “ You don’t know what them boys are like. When this
place was first opened there was a flower-bed in the centre there.
What do you think they did ? P’raps they didn’t do anything ?
P’raps they stood around and sniffed at them ? Well, they jumped
on that bed — that's what they did.”

Have the* manners of the neighbours improved since the days
of poor Jo ? The caretaker, who had been in the army over
thirty years, thinks not. “ About the worst lot in London,”
he affirms with emphasis. “ Do I live near here ? I tried
it once, but it was too hot.” Words convey a poor idea of the
deep disgust with which this is said. It is somewhere in Holborn
that the glories of Mooltan and Bucephalus shed a lustre on his
domestic circle. And now, as you descend the steps and stand under
the archway, and the old soklier.stimulated by a prospective sixpence,
grows more voluble about the contrast between his service to the
State and his present lot, and you finger the coin in your waistcoat-
pocket, wondering how much will soothe the pride of Mooltan and
lessen the humiliation of grooming a hobby-horse, the fancy which
brought you here returns. Surely this is the honest trooper, Mr.
George, who is going back to his shooting-gallery after an interview
with Grandfather Small weed, who has called him a ‘‘ brimstone
beast.” And the old iron gate closes belli nd you ; and the dead
woman lies there, clinging to the bars, and offering her pathetic
atonement to her old love ; and the magic of a great wizard makes
romance more intensely real than the shabby and commonplace
reality. — St. James's Gazette , July 15, 1889.

Hidden away in what appears to those who do not know its
windings to be an endless labyrinth of hoarding, there lies the
little burial-ground so interesting to every leader of Bleak House.
At the present moment, too, it gains an additional interest from the
performance of Jo at Drury Lane Theatre, the great side wall of
which overshadows the little graveyard of Tom-all- Alone’s. It is,
by the w T ay, ten years since Jenny Lee was acting her favourite
part of Jo here in London. February 22, 1870, saw the first
performance of a dramatic version of Bleak House. Dickens
was particularly severe upon this burial-ground. Hero came Jo
to pay a last tribute to his friend, and hither came the proud
Lady Dedlock, the first time merely to see where they had laid
the mysterious Nemo, and lastly to die upon the lilthy steps.
Now r nearly all “ the houses looking on ” are gone, save one or
two which still remain, like islands in a sea of waste ground. The
little tunnel of a court is gone, and so is the sullen gas-lump on which
the poisoned air deposited its “ witch ointment, slimy to the touch.”
Only the old iron gateway remains, which is a matter of wonder.
The Drury Lafie authorities tried to obtain it for the present play.

SCENES OF THE NOVELS AND STORIES 283

but the London County Council guarded it with a jealous care.
Pushing the gateway open on its rusty hinges, one sees at a glance
that a change has come over the ground which a Turk would have
rejected. It is now a County Council playground, so that it is
unnecessary to add that it is as clean as needs be. It is kept
entirely for the delectation of the little children, who come in from
Drury Lane and Clare Market, no adult being allowed to enter,
except the kindly guardian who, though perhaps finding his task
a trifie monotonous, looks after the children in a fatherly manner.
In the near future the little plot will he again surrounded with
houses, so that the Council are somewhat inclined to do away with
the ground. It therefore behoves every Dickens lover who may
desire to look upon the spot to improve the shining hour, if he can
find the graveyard amongst the waste to the westward of Drury
Lane. He must not mistake the larger playground which actually
opens on to Drury Lane for the one which was to testify to future
ages . — Daily Chronicle , June 13, 1806.

The description of Tom-all-Alone's is said to have been suggested
by a similar slum in the neighbourhood of Chatham, which must
have been familiar to Dickens during the days of his boyhood there.
This also has been swept away, and the modern portion of the
Royal Marine Barracks stands upon the site . — K 1.

In Lincoln’s Inn Fields, close to Inigo Jones’s houses, we find
an interesting mansion that also figures in Bleak House . This is a
stately, stone -fronted structure, with a large 4 4 fore-court” and a semi-
circular porch. This was chosen as Mr. Tulkinghorn's residence,
it was really Mr. John Forster’s house. No. 58, where lie resided for
some years, up to Ins marriage. There is a stone stair, and the rooms
are finely proportioned. The ceiling of the front room was floridly
painted, and everyone will recall the nourishing Roman who is
shown so mysteriously pointing down to the body of the murdered
solicitor. For some strange reason, this decoration has since been
painted out. lfablot Browne, the illustrator, fell into a curious
mistake in dealing with this “ Roman.” It will bo remembered
that Dickens makes much of his mysterious pointing in the direction
of the Frenchwoman who was outside, watching for Tulkinghorn.
In a vSecond plate, representing the scene of the murder, the Roman
is shown pointing in the other direction, towards the wall . — F 4.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

One of the weirdest neighbourhoods to Gad’s Hill, and one of those
most closely associated with Dickons, is the village of Cooling. . . .
It. was already noon, and low clouds and mists were lying about
the earth and sky as wo approached the forlorn little village on the
edge of the wide marshes described in the opening chapters of
the novel. This was Cooling, and passing by the few cottages, the
decayed rectory, and straggling buildings, wo came at length to
the churchyard.— 1.

284

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

The most dramatic scenes of Our Mutual Friend would seem to
have been laid at Henley and about Henley. The painstaking Mr.
Allbut has, I think, shown this very clearly. The inn where the
marriage took place is called “An Angler’s Inn.” . . . This inn
was, certainly, the good old Red Lion, where Johnson and Boswell
put up, and Shenstonc before them, who sang of it — *

“ Whoe’er has travelled life's dull round.

Where’er his stages may have been.

May sigh to think he still has found
His warmest welcome at an inn.”

A cheerful, picturesque old mansion of the brightest and mellowest
brick Here is the “ Inn Lawn ” running down to the river’s edge,
crowded on boat-race days. Lizzie was employed at a large paper
mill a short distance from Henley, and such we find at Marsh Mill,
close to the weir, with a wooden bridge that leads to the lock.
We also find the tow-path where Eugene met Lizzie, and from which
he was dogged by Headstone. Eugene then crossed the handsome
bridge, and must have been attacked immediately after. Plash-
water Weir lock and loekhouse can be iixed beyond Medmenham,
at Harley Lock . — F 4.

george Silverman's explanation.

On the road between Preston and Blackburn, lies a picturesque
old mansion, fast falling to decay, but standing out weird and
melancholy on the summit of the precipice on which it was erected.
This building is Hoghton Tower, which suggested to Dickens the
locale of the story George Silverman' s Explanation. —I).

DIC'KEXS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

GENERAL.

“Dickons,” I then [in 1851] said, “can give you a landscape
proper — a piece of the rural English earth in the summer or in its
winter dress, with a bit of water and a village spire in it ; he can give
you, what painters seldom attempt, a great patch of fiat country
by night, with the red trail of a railway train traversing the dark-
ness ; he can succeed in a sea-piece ; he can describe the crowded
quarter of a city, or the main street of a country town, by night or
by day; he can paint a garden, sketch the interior of a cathedral,
or photograph the interior of a hut or of a drawing-room ; he can
even be minute in his delineations of single articles of dress or of
furniture. Take him again in the figure department. Here he
can be an animal painter, with Landseer, when he likes, as wit-
ness bis dogs, ponies, and ravens ; he can be a I/storical painter,
as witness his description of the (Jordon Riots ; he can be a carica-
turist, like Leech ; he can give you a bit of village life, with Wilkie;
he can paint a haggard scene of low city life, so as to remind one
of some of the Dutch artists, or a pleasant family scene, gay or
sentimental, reminding one of Mad iso or of Frank Stone ; he can
body forth romantic conceptions of terror or beauty that have arisen
in his imagination j lit* can compose a fantastic fairy piece ; he can
even succeed in a dream or allegory, where the figures are hardly
human/’

Mr. Dickens, on the other hand, is singularly aggressive and
opinionative. There is scarcely a social question on which he has
not touched; and there are fe.v of his novels in which he lias not
blended the functions of a social and political critic with those of
the artist, to a degree detrimental, as many think, to his genius in
the latter capacity. For Mr. Dickens’s wonderful powers of descrip-
tion are no guarantee for the correctness of his critical judgments
in those particulars to which he may apply them. “ We may ow r e
one degree of respect,” I have said, “ to Dickens, as the describcr
of Squeers and Creakle, and quite another degree of respect when
he tells us how ho would have boys educated. Mr. Spenlow may be
a capital likeness to a Doctors' Commons lawyer ; and yet this
would not be the proper ground for concluding Mr. Dickens's view
of a reform in the Ecclesiastical Courts to be right. No man has

286 DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

given more picturesque illustrations of London criminal life : yet
he might not be equally trustworthy in his notions of prison-
discipline. His Dennis, the hangman, is a powerfully conceived
character ; yet this is no reason for accepting his opinion on capital
punishments.”

All honour to Thackeray and the prose -fiction of social reality ;
but much honour, too, to Dickens, for maintaining among us, even
in the realm of the light and the amusing, some representation in
prose of that art of ideal fantasy, the total absence of which in the
literature of any age would be a sign nothing short of hideous.
♦The true objection to Dickens is, that his idealism tends too much
to extravagance and caricature. It would be possible for an ill-
natured critic to go through all his works, and to draw out in one
long column a list of their chief characters, annexing in a parallel
column the phrases and labels by which these characters are dis-
tinguished, and of which they are generalisations — the There’s
some credit in being jolly here,” of Mark Tapley : the “ It isn’t
of the slightest consequence,” of Toots ; the “ Something will
turn up,” of Mr. Micawber, etc. etc. Even this, however, is a
mode of art legitimate, I believe, in principle, as it is certainly most
effective in fact. There never was a Mr. Micawber in nature,
exactly as he appears in the pages of Dickens ; but Micawberism
pervades nature through and through ; and to have extracted this
quality from nature, embodying the full essence of a thousand
instances of it in one ideal monstrosity, is a feat of invention.
From the incessant repetition by Mr. Dickens of this inventive
process openly and with variation, except in the results, the public
have caught what is called his mannerism or trick ; and hence a
certain recoil from his later writings among the cultivated and
fastidious. But let anyone observe our current table-talk or our
current literature, and, despite this profession of dissatisfaction,
and ii* the very circles where it most abounds, let him note how
gladly Dickens is used, and how frequently his phrases, his fancies, and
the names of his characters come in, as illustration, embellishment,
proverb, and seasoning. Take any periodical in which there is a
severe criticism of Dickens’s last publication ; and, ten to one, in
the same periodical, and perhaps by the same hand, tlieie will be
a leading article, setting out with a quotation from Dickens that
flashes on the mind of the reader the thought which the whole
article is meant to convey, or containing some allusion to one of
Dickens’s characters which enriches the text in the middle and
floods it an inch round with colour and humour. — David Masson.
M 1 .

If Mr. Dickens’s characters were gathered together, they would
constitute a town populous enough to send a representative to
Parliament. Let us enter. The style of architecture is unparalleled.
There is an individuality about the buildings. In some obscure
way they remind one of human faces. There are houses sly-looking,
houses wicked -looking, houses pompous-looking. Heaven bless
us 1 what a rakish pump 1 What a self-important town-hall

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 287

What a hard-hearted prison ! The dead walls are covered with
advertisements of Mr. Sleary’s circus. Newman Noggs comes
shambling along. Mr. and the Misses Pecksniff come sailing down
the sumiy side of the street. Miss Mercy’s parasol is gay ; papa’s
neckcloth is white and terribly starched. Dick Swiveller leans
against a wall, his hands in his pockets, a primrose held between
his teeth, contemplating the opera of Punch and Judy, which is
being conducted under the management of Messrs. Codlin and Short.
You turn a corner, and you meet the coffin of little Paul Dombey
borne along. In the afternoon you hear the rich tones of the organ
from Miss La Creev 3 r ’s first floor, for Tom Pinch has gone to live
there now ; and as you know all the people as you know your own
brothers and sisters, and consequently require no letters of intro-
duction, you go up and talk with the dear old fellow about all hi 3
friends and your friends, and towards evening he takes your arm,
and you walk out to see poor Nelly’s grave. — Alexander Smith.

We think him a very original writer — well entitled to his popu-
larity, and not likely to lose it - and the tr uest and most spirited
delineator of English life, amongst the middle and lower classes,
since the days of Smollett and Fielding. He has remarkable powers
of observation, and great skill in communicating what he has
observed — a keen sense of the ludicrous — exuberant humour — and
that mastery in the pathetic, which, though it seems opposed to
the gift of humour, is often found in conjunction with it. Add to
these qualities an unaffected style, fluent, easy, spirited, and terse
—a good deal of dramatic power, and great truthfulness and ability
in description. We know no other English writer to whom he
bears a marked resemblance. He sometimes imit Hes other writers,
such as Fielding in his introductions, and Washington Irving in
his detached tales, and thus exhibits his skill as a parodist. But
his own manner is very distinct, and comparison with any £ther
would not serve to illustrate and describe it. We would compare
him rather with the painter Hogarth. — Edinburgh Review , 1838.

We esteem Dickens, next after Shakespeare, as the greatest of
English humorists — that is to say, with reference to literary history,
the greatest of all humorists; for none of the foreigners, ancient
or modern — Aristophanes, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, or Jean
Paul — have come near Shakespeare in this faculty, though possess-
ing it in a large measure. That none of the English humorists of
the eighteenth century— not even Swift or Fielding, much less
Smollett or Sterne — is to be compared with Dickons in this respect,
we believe Thackeray himself would be ready to admit. Hogarth,
if the two arts of painting and novel-writing allow their comparison,
may be deemed a precursor of Dickens. Shakespeare’s clowns
and his foolish varlets or blundering louts are, equally with his
heroes, the creation of a great poet. Shall we not say the same
of Pickwick, of Sam Weller, of Pecksniff, of Mrs. Gamp, and of
many other queer characters which only a mightily creative imagi-
nation could have formed ? Dickens is always a great writer ;

288

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

but he is a most successful creator in the department of quaint
figures and odd habits, curious bits of human life picked up in
corners of the world, often torn and trampled into fantastic shapes,
and soiled with the soot and the mire of the London streets. In
this department he excels Balzac and Victor Hugo, while he re-
sembles the latter and differs from the former in his respect for the
humanity clothed in such a ragged garb of such uncomely aspect
and ungainly demeanour. In the amount of his native genius,
there can be no question, Charles Dickens alone outweighs all the
writers of fiction in his time. — Illustrated London News , June 18,
1870.

Passing into the Strand, he saw in a bookseller’s window an
announcement of the first number of the Almshouse ; so he pur-
chased a copy, and, hurrying back to his lodgings, proceeded to
ascertain what Mr. Popular Sentiment had to say to the public
on the subject which had lately occupied so much of his own
attention.

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When
evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with
grave decorum and laborious argument. An age w'as occupied in
proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in
folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read.
We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker : ridicule is found
to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch
more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned
quartos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will
be done by shilling numbers.

Of all such reformers Mr. Sentiment is the most powerful. It is
incredible the number of evil practices he has put down : it is to
be feared he will soon lack subjects, and that when he has made
the working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer put into proper-
sized pint bottles, there will be nothing further for him left to do.
Mr. Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man, and perhaps not
the less so that his good poor people are so very good ; his hard rich
people so very hard ; and the genuinely honest so very honest.
Namby-pamby in these days is not thrown away if it bo introduced
in the proper quarters. Divine peeresses are no longer interesting,
though possessed of every virtue ; but a pattern peasant or an
immaculate manufacturing hero may talk as much tw addle as one of
Mrs. Radcliffc’s heroines, and still be listened to. Perhaps, "fiowever,
Mr. Sentiment’s great attrac tion is in his second-rate characters.
If his heroes and heroines w r alk upon stilts, as heroes and heroines,
I fear, ever must, their attendant satellites are as natural as though
one met them in the street : they w alk and talk like men and women,
and live among our friends a rattling, lively life ; yes, live, and will
live till the names of their calling shall be forgotten in their own,
and Bucket and Mrs. Gamp will be the only words left to us to
signify a detective police officer or a monthly nurse. . . .

Bold finished the number ; and as he threw it aside, ho thought
that that at least had no direct appliance to Mr. Harding, and that

290

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

the absurdly strong colouring of the picture would disenable the
work from doing either good or harm. He was wrong. The artist
who paints for the million must use glaring colours, as no one knew
better than Mr. Sentiment when he described the inhabitants of
his almshouse ; and the radical reform which has now swept over
such establishments has owed more to the twenty numbers of Mr.
Sentiment’s novel, than to all the true complaints which have
escaped from the public for the last half-century. — Anthony
Trollope, in The Warden.

Dickens, with preternatural apprehension of the language of
manners, and the varieties of street life, with pathos and laughter,
with patriotic and still enlarging generosity, writes London tracts.
He is a painter of English details, like Hogarth ; local and temporary
in his tints and style, and local in his aims. — R. W. Emerson, in
English Traits.

Dickens shows that life in its rudest forms may wear a tragic
grandeur ; that amidst follies and sensual excesses, provoking
aughter or scorn, the moral feelings do not wholly die ; and that
the haunts of the blackest crimes are sometimes lighted up by the
presence and influence of the noblest souls. — Channing, On the
Present Age .

Charles Dickens, the most popular novelist of the century, and
one of the greatest humorists that England has produced. — John
Forster.

The good, the gentle, high-gifted, over-friendly, noble Dickens—
every inch of him an Honest Man.— Thomas Carlyle.

Many of his portraits excite pity, and suggest the existence of
crying social sins ; but of almost all we are obliged to say that they
border on and frequently reach caricature, of which the essence
is to catch a striking likeness by exclusively selecting and exaggerat-
ing a peculiarity that marks the man but does not represent him.
Dickens belongs in literature to the same class as his illustrator,
Hablot Browne, in design, though he far surpasses the illustrator
in range and power. — George Brimley, Essays.

Mr. Dickens’s genius is essentially irregular and unsym metrical.
Hardly any English writer perhaps is much more so. His style
is an example of it. It is descriptive, racy, and flowing ; it is
instinct with new imagery and singular illustration ; but it does not
indicate that due proportion of the faculties to one another which
is a beauty in itself, and which cannot help diffusing beauty over
every happy word and moulded clause.— Walter Bagehot, in Literary
Studies.

Of Charles Dickens’s fame a grand feature is its universality.
His name is as much a “ household word ” in every sequestered
hamlet lying between the most extreme points of our home islands,
as it is in the metropolis ; and he is as well known in the United
States, Canada, and Australia, as he is in the city round St. Paul’s.

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 291

Wherever there are men of English origin, speaking the English
tongue, there the genius of Charles Dickens is one of the most
important facts of life. It would be a long task to say all that
Dickens has done for the English novel. It would be easier to
state what he has not done for it. Indeed the novel of this genera-
tion is so completely a work of his re-creation, that it would be mere
ingratitude, backed up by stupidity, not to hail him as the im-
mediate parent of it. — J. Cordy Jeaffreson, in Novels and Novelists.

Since his death long obituary notices of him have been given
in the Italian papers. The Diritto thinks that Sam Weller, and the
” modern TartutTe ” in Martin Cliuzzlewit , will be immortal, like
Perpetua and Don Abhondio in Manzoni’s Promessi Sposi, which
have become popular types of character. The Nazione speaks of
the deceased as the greatest of modern English novelists. “ He
was, 1 ’ it adds, “ for five-and-thirty years, at once the most esteemed
novelist and the greatest social reformer of his fellow-countrymen.
There will be monuments to him in marble and bronze, but his
finest monument will be the good lie did for the poorer classes.” —
H 4.

SKETCHES BY BOZ.

He (Dickens) is the Washington Irving of English low life; and
as his observations appear to have been confined to that department,
his knowledge of it appears to bo more copious, and his descriptions
of it, while more varied and ample, are not quite so completely
finished as sonic of the few given by Irving. The most remarkable
of the qualities of “ Boz ” is certainly his humour. But he displays
also much and very fine wit. He not only exhibits in action the
follies and absurdities of human beings, but intersperses his narra-
tive with remarks on men and things characterised by great point
and shrewdness . — London and Westminster Review.

If ho will endeavour to supply whatever may bo effected
by care and study — avoid imitation of other writers — keep nature
steadily before his eyes — and check all dispositions to exaggerate —
we know no writer who seems likely to attain higher success in that
rich and useful department of fiction which is founded on faithful
representations of human character, as exemplified in the aspects
of English life . — Edinburgh Review, October 1838.

THE PICKWICK PAPERS.

We have very rarely met with a writer who more quickly seizes
peculiarity of character, or, what is quite as difficult to seize, the
external marks (often trifling enough) by which thoso peculiarities
are indicated, and in which they are embodied. So completely is
our author master of this latter art, that a few slight dashes will
often give us a stronger conception of the character he designs to
set before us than tho longest and most elaborate descriptions.
His personages impress us with all the force and vividness of reality.

292

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

They are not described — they are exhibited. He has also been
equally happy in seizing those peculiarities which discriminate
different classes of the community from one another ; which mark
the various species as strongly as other peculiarities do the in-
dividual. — Eclectic Review , April 1837.

A writer, whose name we have forgotten, remarked that Pickwick
was made up of “ two pounds of Smollett, three ounces of Sterne,
a handful of Hook, a dash of the grammatical Pierce Egan —
incidents at pleasure, served with an original sauce piquante .” And
Lady Chatterton, in one of her works, remarked : “ Mr. Davy,
who accompanied Colonel Chesney up the Euphrates, has recently
been in the service of Mahomet Ali Pacha. Pickwick happening to
reach Davy while he was at Damascus, lie read a part of it to the
Pacha, who was so delighted with it, that Davy was on one occasion
summoned to him in the middle of the night, to finish the reading
of some part in which he had been interrupted. Mr. Davy read in
Egypt, upon another occasion, some passages from these unrivalled
papers to a blind Englishman, who was in such ecstasy with what
he had heard, that he exclaimed he was almost thankful he could
not see he was in a foreign country, for that, while he listened, he
felt completely as though he were again in England .” — II 4.

T am sure that a man who, a hundred years hence, should sit
down to -write the history of our time, would do wrong to put that
great contemporary history of Pickwick aside as a frivolous work.
It contains true character under false names ; and, like Roderick
Random , an inferior work, and Tom Jones (one that is immeasurably
superior) gives us a better idea of the state and ways of the people,
than one could gather from any more pompous or authentic history.
— W. M. Thackeray.

The Wellers, father and son, both talk a language and employ
allusions utterly irreconcilable with their habits and station, and
we constantly detect both in the nice and even critical use of words
and images borrowed from sources wholly inaccessible to them.
As a describer and portrait-painter, Dickens too frequently conde-
scends to be a copyist, and almost always on such occasions betrays
a marked inferiority to his prototypes. What is the talent or
quality that has procured him so unprecedented a share of popu-
larity ? In our opinion he has obtained and well -merited it by
being the first to turn to account the rich and varied stores of wit
and humour discoverable amongst the lower classes of the Metro-
polis, whose language has hitherto been condemned as a poor,
bald, disjointed, unadorned, and nearly unintelligible slang, utterly
destitute of feeling, fancy, or force. Having made up our minds
as to the origin of Mr. Dickens’s popularity, it remains to add a word
or two as to its durability, of which many warm admirers are
already beginning to doubt— not, it must be owned, without reason ;
for the last three or four numbers (Nos. 14, 15, 10, 17) of Pickwick
are certainly much inferior to the former ones, and indications
are not wanting that the particular vein of humour which has

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 293

hitherto yielded so much attractive material is worked out. In
the Sketches by Boz we find much of the same nicety of observation
and quaint perception of the ludicrous as in the Pickwick Payers ;
but the essays distinguished by these qualities bear a small pro-
portion to those in which the laboured, the commonplace, or the
imitative style predominates. There is a sustained power, a range
of observation, and a continuity of interest in this series which we
seek in vain in any other of his works. The fact is, Mr. Dickens
writes too often and too fast ; on the principle, we presume, of
making hay while the sun shines, he seems to have accepted at once
all engagements that were offered him, and the consequence is, that
in too many instances he has been compelled to

“Forestall the blighted harvest of the brain,’’

and pour forth, in their crude, unfinished, undigested state, thoughts,
feelings, observations, and plans which it required time and study
to mature — or supply the allotted number of pages with original
matter of the most commonplace description, or hints caught from
others and diluted to make them pass for his own. If he persists
much longer in this course, it requires no gift of prophec}' to fore-
tell his fate — ho has risen like a rocket, and he will come down like
the stick ; but let him give his capacity fair play, and it is rich,
vigorous, and versatile enough to ensure him a high and enduring
reputation. — Quarterly Bcview , October 1837.

There is nothing from which Mr. Dickens draws so largely as the
ludicrous of situation. This is one of the same nature with that
practical wit, commonly called horse-play, which consists in the
dexterous removal of a gentleman's chair as he is in the act of sitting
down, and sucli-likc feats. If Mr. Dickens can exhibit a character
with his heels in the air, he laughs and chuckles, and rubs his hands
and thinks he has achieved a great chapter. Mow Mr. Winkle, the
third of Mr. Pickwick’s colleagues, is the chosen subject for this sort
of merriment, lie is a mere fool, and of all imaginable fools the
most insipid. He is put upon a tall horse, and made to dismount
that he may not be able to get up again. He is provided with a gun
to shoot his friend Tupiuan by accident (a capital joke !) lie is
set on skates to be laid sprawling on the ice. He is represented as
the greatest coward in the wor'd, and is made to go through the
motions of a duel, and is on the point of being shot, because, having
shut his eyes in very fear, he cannot perceive that the challenger
is a man he had never seen. The only characters of any pith in the
whole book are Sam Weller and his father.

Wo should bo unjust to Mr. Dickens if we failed to notice the
character of old Wardle, an honest, hearty, hospitable country
gentleman of small estate. It is ad mirably drawn, and the Christmas
gambols at his house are delightful. We have seen nothing like it
from the pen of any writer of this century. We repeat that we have
no quarrel with Mr. Dickens, and admit that he has considerable
powers. Our quarrel is not with him, but with (he must excuse the

294

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

word) his keepers. It Is nis misfortune to possess a talent, the abuse
of which renders him acceptable to that class of readers by whom
meretricious arts are preferred to modest grace. This is therefore
his public . By this he is debauched and corrupted, and to this he
prostitutes himself. Wo pity him, and we would, if it were possible,
shame them. — Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, Va.),
September 1837.

Not much of Dickens will live, because it has so little correspond-
ence to life. He was the incarnation of cockneydom, a caricaturist
who aped the moralist ; he should have kept to short stories. If
his novels are read at all in the future, people will wonder what we
saw in them, save some possible element of fun meaningless to them.
The world will never let Mr. Pickwick, who to mo is full of the
lumber of imbecility, share honours with Don Quixote. — George
Meredith, quoted by Edward Clodd, in Fortnightly Review , July
1909.

OLIVER TWIST.

Thackeray, in The Neivcomes , remarked that “ a profane work,
called Oliver Twist , having appeared, which George read out to his
family with admirable emphasis, it is a fact that Lady Walham
became so interested in the parish boy’s progress, that she took bis
history into her bedroom (where it was discovered, under Blather-
wick’s Voice from Mesopotamia, by her ladyship’s maid) ; and that
Kew laughed so immensely at Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, as to en-
danger the reopening of his wound.”

And again, in Fraser's Magazine for February 1840, at the end of
a clever satire upon the Newgate Calendar school of romance,
purporting to be written by Ikey Solomons, jun., Thackeray thus
remarks upon Oliver Twist :

“ No man has read that remarkable tale without being interested
in poor Nancy and her murderer, and especially amused and
tickled by the gambols of the skilful Dodger and his companions.
The power of the writer is so amazing, that the reader at once becomes
his captive, and must follow him whithersoever he leads : and to
what are w*o led ? Breathless to watch all the crimes of Fagin,
tenderly to deplore the errors of Nancy, to have for Bill Sikes a
kind of pity and admiration, and an absolute love for tho society
of the Dodger. All these heroes stepped from the novel on to the
stage ; and the whole London public, from peers to chimney-sweeps,
were interested about a set of ruffians whoso occupations are thievery,
murder, and prostitution. A most agreeable set of rascals, indeed,
who have their virtues too, but not good company for any man.
We had better pass them by in decent silence ; for, as no writer can
or dare tell the whole truth concerning them, and faithfully explain
their vices, there is no need to give ex parte statements of their
virtues. . . . The pathos of the workhouse scenes in Oliver Tmst 9
of the Fleet Prison descriptions in Pickwick , is genuine and pure —
as much of this as you please ; as tender a hand to the poor, as
kindly a word to the unhappy as you will, but in the name of

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 295

common sense let us not expend our sympathies on cut-throats
and other such prodigies of evil ! ” — H 4.

A writer, who chooses to be known to the literary world by the
name of “ Boz,” has, for some time past, been exhibiting his antics
before the public. We have never sought his acquaintance, for the
same reason that we should avoid a fellow who might thrust himself
into an assembly room, and invite the notice of the company by
the dress and grimaces of a merry-andrew. We should ask our-
selves, in such a case, what man, capable of refinement, would
choose to be a buffoon ? What man, possessing a particle of self-
respect, would descend to an exhibition so degrading and disgust-
ing ? Observing that in each of the volumes ( Bentley's Miscellany,
American edition) before us there was one tale, and one only, from
his pen, and finding that one of these consisted of eighteen and the
other of twenty-five pages duodecimo, we took up the volume with
a light heart, and went to work with something like the same con-
solation with which Fergus MTvor went to the scaffold. Thus
it was that we became acquainted with the Public Life of Mr.
Tulr amble, and The Progress of Oliver Twist , the Parish Boy . The
result of this w r as, that w e were not only confirmed in our suspicions
of the true character of the w riter, but that our indignation was
strongly excited against the critic who had palmed him on our
notice. We felt called upon to expose the one and denounce the
other as proper objects for the contempt and indignation of the
public. To qualify ourselvos for the duty, ami to secure ourselves
against any possibility of injustice, we undertook, and faithfully
accomplished, the loathsome task of reading the volumes through.
Having completed it, we determined that if, from this time forth,
any of our readers suffers himself to he cheated out of his money
or his time by Mr. “ Boz ” himself, or any of his associates, aiders, and
abettors, it shall not be our fault . — Southern Literary Messenger
(Richmond, Va.), May 1837.

In the present tale, or string of stories, it looks as if he [Dickens]
revelled, whilo painting low or degraded nature, among objects
which, unless merely subservient to finer and higher elements
equally well drawn and furnished, never can awaken our nobler
sympathies, nor prune and invigorate the w ings of these awakened
sensibilities. On this account we cannot place our author among
those novelists who are models in regard to the inculcation of
moral sentiments and the lessons that refine while they delight.
Not that Mr. Dickens is an immoral writer. It is not in his nature
to be such ; it is the farthest possible thing from his intention,
evidently, to write for the mere sake of gain, of entertainment, or
of merely harmless tiction. He has high and pure aims ; nor
can he have failed of doing good, morally speaking. Whoever
supposes that the History of the Parish Boy's Progress — after reading
it at one or two sittings, or without any considerable intervals,
from beginning to end — will be as popular twenty years hence aa

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DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

it has been and is now, has tastes and expectations very different
from those entertained by us . — Monthly Review , January 1839.

The circumstantiality of the murder of Nancy is more harrowing
than the bulletin of 50,000 men killed at Borodino. “ Boz ” fails
whenever he attempts to write for effect ; his description of rural
felicity and country scenery, of which lie clearly knows much less
than of London, where he is quite at home and wideawake, are,
except when comical, overlaboured and out of nature. Oliver
Twist is directed against the poor-law and workhouse system,
and in our opinion with much unfairness. The abuses which he
ridicules are not only exaggerated, but in nineteen cases out of
twenty do not at all exist. The whole tale rivals in improbabilities
those stories in which the hero, at his birth, is cursed by a wicked
fairy and protected by a good one ; but Oliver himself, to whom
all these improbabilities happen, is the most improbable of all.
He is represented to be a pattern of modern excellence, guileless
himself, and measuring others by his own innocence ; delicate and
high-minded, affectionate, noble, brave, generous, with the manners
of a son of a most distinguished gentleman, not only u neorrupted,
but incorruptible ; less absurd would it be to expect to gather
grapes on thorns, to find pearls on dunghills, violets in Drury Lane,
or make silk purses of sows 5 ears. We object in toto to tho staple
of Oliver Twist — a series of representations which must familiarise
the rising generation with the haunts, deeds, language, and char-
acters of the very dregs of the community. Notwithstanding that
the greater tendency in woman towards the gentler affections
renders a Nancy somewhat less improbable than an Oliver, we fear
that both characters must be considered contrary to the laws of
human nature and experience everywhere, and particularly in
England . — Quarterly Review , Juno 1839. [The writer admits
Dickens’s “ close observation of incidents and perceptions of
characters and professions.”]

NICHOLAS NTCRLKBY.

The best-drawn characters in the book, Man tali ni and Mrs.
Nickleby, have only caricature parts to play ; and, in preserving
them, there is no g^at difficulty. — Fraser's Magazine , April 1840.

If Nicholas Nickleby possesses no character altogether equal to
Mr. Pickwick, it is on tho whole a far superior work. Indeed, no
other tale of our author’s can boast so consistent and well-developed
a plot, so sustained an interest in tho action, and so ample and
varied an assemblage of characters. His faults, however, are
numerous . — Christian Remembrancer , December 1842.

Sydney Smith, in a letter to Sir George Phillips, about September
1838, wrote : “ Nickleby is very good. I stood out against Mr.
Dickens as long as I could, but he has conquered me.”

Lecturing on “ Week-Day Preachers, 55 at St. Martin’s Hall (July
1857), in aid of the Jerrold Fund, Thackeray spoke of the delight
which children derived from reading the works of Mr. Dickens,.

KASTOATE, ROCHESTER

8o silent arc the streets of Cloislerham that, on a summer day, the sun-blinds ot
its shops scarce dare to Map in the south wind

From a water-colour by Paul Hr add on

297

298

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

and mentioned that one of his own children said to him that she
wished he “ would write stori&s like those which Mr. Dickens wrote.
The same young lady,” he continued, “ when she was ten years
old, read Nicholas Nickleby morning, noon, and night, beginning
it again as soon as she had finished it, and never wearying of its
fun.”— #4.

MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK.

Master Humphrey's Clock supplies the place of the Sultana in
the Arabian Nights , of the ladies in the Decameron , and of Fadladoen
in Lalla Rookh . After a considerable deal of difficulty, Magog is
induced to tell a story to while away an hour or two ; and here we
have the finest illustration of the idea, Parturiunt montes , nascetur
ridicnlus mus , that was ever presented for our consideration. All
this nonsense about the giants is only to usher in one of the weakest
and most unfortunate tales — the vilest attempt at pathos — the
veriest abortion in the shape of an endeavour to create interest
or afford amusement that ever was perpetrated, flow Dickens,
with his talents and experience, could have suffered such a thing
to go forth under the sanction of his name is to us a matter of
unfeigned marvel,— Monthly Review , May 1840.

THE OLD CURIOSITY STIOP.

It is told of Daniel O’Connell, the great Irish agitator, that
travelling with a friend one day and reading the then recently
issued book where the death of Little Nell is recorded, the great
orator’s eyes filled with tears, and he sobbed aloud, Ho should
not have killed her ! — he should not have killed her ! She was too
good ! ” and so he threw the book out of tho window, unable to
read more, and indignant that the author should have immolated
a heroine in death. — // 4.

BARNABY RUDGE.

By far tho ablest criticism of any single work of Dickens is in
Edgar Allen Poe’s two famous reviews of Barnaby Radge . The
first was a prospective review published in the Philadelphia Saturday
Evening Post of 1st May 1841, when the tale had only just begun,
and forecasting the author’s treatment of tho story. It was this
that drew the letter from Dickens inquiring whether he had dealings
with the devil. When the work was finished ho reviewed it again,
and in the second review quoted from his first, so that a notice of
the one embodies the other. After a brilliant outline of tho plot,
he observes :

“ We are not prepared to say, so positively as wo could wish,
whether, by the public at largo, tho whole mystery of the murder
committed by Rudge, with the identity of tho Maypole ruffian with
Rudge himself, was fathomed at any period previous to the period
intended, or, if so, whether at a period so early as materially to
interfere with the interest designed ; but we are forced, through

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 299

sheer modesty, to suppose this the case ; since, by ourselves in-
dividually, the secret was distinctly understood immediately upon
the perusal of the story of Solomon Daisy, which occurs at the
seventh page of this volume of three hundred and twenty-three.
In the number of the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post , for 1st
May 1841 (the tale having then only begun), will be found a 'pro -
spective notice of some length, in which we make use of the following
words :

44 ‘ That Barnaby is the son of the murderer may not appear
evident to our readers — but we will explain. The person murdered
is Mr. Reuben Ilaredale. He was found assassinated in his bed-
chamber. His steward (Mr. Rudge, senior), and his gardener
(name not mentioned) arc missing. At first both are suspected.
44 Some months afterwards ” — here we use the words of the story —
“ the steward’s body, scarcely to be recognised but by his clothes,
and the watch and ring he wore — was found at the bottom of a
piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast, where
lie had been stabbed by a knife. He was only partly dressed ; and
all people agreed that he had been sitting up reading in his own
room, where there -were many traces of blood, and was suddenly
fallen upon and killed, before his master.”

44 4 Now, be it observed, it is not the author himself who asserts
that the steward's body was found ; he has put the words in the mouth
of one of his characters. His design is to make it appear, in the
denouement, that the steward, Rudge, first murdered the gardener,
then went to his master’s chamber, murdered him , was interrupted
by his (Rudge’s) wife, whom he seized and held tv the wrist , to
prevent her giving the alarm— that he then, after possessing himself
of the booty desired, returned to the gardener’s room, exchanged
clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own watch and ring, and
secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so late a period
that the features could not be identified.’

“ The differences between our pre-conceived ideas, as here
stated, and the actual facts of the story, will be found immaterial.
The gardener was murdered, not before, but after his master ; and
that Rudge’s wife seized him by the wrist, instead of his seizing
her , has so much the air of a mistake on the part of Mr. Dickens,
that we can scarcely speak of our own version as erroneous. The
grasp of a murderer’s bloody hand on the wTist of a woman enceinte,
would have been more likely to produce the effect described (and
this everyone will allow) than the grasp of the hand of the woman
upon the wrist of the assassin. We may therefore say of our sup-
position as Talleyrand said of some Cockney’s bad French — que s*il
ne suit pas Fran$ais , assurhnent done il le doit tire — that if we did
not rightly prophesy, yet, at least, our prophecy should have been
right.

44 We are informed in tho Preface to Barnaby Rudge that 4 no
account of the Gordon Riots having been introduced into any work
of fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and re-
markable features,’ our author 4 was Fed to project this tale.’ But

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DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

for this distinct announcement (for Mr. Dickens can scarcely have
deceived himself) we should have looked upon the riots as altogether
an afterthought. It is evident that they have no necessary con-
nection with the story. In our digest, which carefully includes all
essentials of the plot, we have dismissed the doings of the mob in a
paragraph. The whole event of the drama would have proceeded
as well without as with them. They have even the appearance of
being forcibly introduced. In our compendium it will be seen
that we emphasised several allusions to an interval of five years.
The action is brought up to a certain point. The train of events is,
so far, uninterrupted — nor is there any apparent need of interrup-
tion — yet all the characters are now thrown forward for a period of
five years. And why ? We ask in vain. It is not to bestow upon
the lovers a more decorous maturity of age— for this is the only
possible idea which suggests itself — Edward Chester is already
eight-and-twenty, and Emma Ilaredate would, in America at least,
be upon the list of old maids. No — there is no such reason ; nor
does there appear to be any one more plausible than that, as it is
now the year of our Lord 1775, an advance of five years will bring
the dramatis personce up to a very remarkable period, affording an
admirable opportunity for their display — the period, in short, of the
‘ No Popery * Riots. Tin’s was the idea with which we were forcibly
impressed in perusal, and which nothing less than Mr. Dickens’s
positive assurance to the contrary would have been sufficient to
eradicate.

“ It is, perhaps, but one of a thousand instances of the disadvan-
tages both to the author and the public of the present absurd fashion
of periodical novel-writing, that our author had not sufficiently
considered or determined upon any particular plot when he began
the story now under review. In fact, wo see, or fancy that we see,
numerous traces of indecision — traces which a dexterous supe r-
vision of the complete work might have enabled him to erase. Wo
have already spoken of the intermission of a lustrum. The opening
speeches of old Chester are by far too truly gentlemanly for his
subsequent character. The wife of Vardcn, also, is too wholesale
a shrew to be converted into a quiet wife— the original design was
to punish her. At page 16, we read thus — Solomon Daisy is telling
the story :

“ * “I put as good a face upon it as I could, and, muffling myself
up, started out with a lighted lantern in one hand and the key of the
church in the other” — at this point- of the narrative, the dress of
the stage man rustled as if he had turned to hear more distinctly.’

“ Here the design is to call the reader’s attention to a point in tho
tale; but no subsequent explanation is made. Again, a few lines
below :

“ * The houses were all shut up, and the folks indoors, and perhaps
there is only one man in tho w'orld who knows how dark it really
was.’

“ Here the Intention is still more evident, but there is no result.
Again, at page 51, tho idiot draws Mr. Chester to the window, and

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 301

directs his attention to the clothes hanging upon the lines in the
* yard :

“ ‘ “ Look down,” he said softly ; 4 4 do you mark how they whisper
in each other’s ears, then dance and leap to make believe they are in
sport ? Do you see how they stop for a moment, when they think
there is no one looking, and mutter among themselves again ; and
then how they roll and gambol, delighted with the mischief they’ve
been plotting ? Look at ’em now I See how they whirl and plunge.
And now they stop again, and whisper cautiously together — little
thinking, mind, how often I have lain upon the ground and watched
them. I say what is it they plot and hatch ? Do you know ? ” ’

“ Upon perusal of these ravings, wo at once supposed them to
have allusion to some real plotting ; and even now we cannot force
ourselves to believe them not so intended. They suggested the
opinion that Harcdale himself would be implicated in the murder,
and that the counsellings alluded to might be those of that gentleman
with Rudge. Tt is by no means impossible that some such con-
ception wavered in the mind of the author. At page 32 we have
a confirmation of our idea, when Varden endeavours to arrest the
murderer in the house of his wife :

“ 4 “Come back — comeback ! ” exclaimed the woman, wrestling
with and clasping him. “ Do not touch him on your life. He
carries other lives besides his otvn” ’

“ The denouement fails to account for this exclamation.

“ In the beginning of tho story much emphasis is placed upon
the two female servants of Haredale, and upon his journey to and
tivm London, as veil as upon his wife. We have merely said, in
our digest, that he was a widower, italicising the renv.rk. All these
points are, in fact, singularly irrelevant in the supposition that the
original design has not undergone modification.

“ Again, at page 57, when Haredale talks of ‘ his dismantled
and beggared hearth,’ wo cannot help fancying that the author
hud in view some different- wrong, or series of wrongs, perpetrated
by Chester, than any which appear in the end. This gentleman,
too, takes extreme and frequent pains to acquire dominion over the
rough Hugh — this matter is particularly insisted upon by the
novelist — we look, of course, for some important result — but the
filching of a letter is nearly all that is accomplished. That Barnaby’s
delight in the desperate scones o f the rebellion is inconsistent with
his horror of blood will strike every reader, and this inconsistency
seems to be the consequence of the afterthought upon which we have
already commented. Tn fact, the title of the work, tho elaborate
and pointed manner of the commencement, the impressive de-
scription of Tho Warren, and especially of Mrs. Rudge, go far to
show that Mr. Dickens lias really deceived himself — that the soul
of the plot, as originally conceived, was the murder of Haredale,
with the subsequent discovery of the murderer in Rudge — but this
idea was afterwards abandoned, or rather suffered to be merged in
that of the Popish Riots. The result has been most unfavourable.
That which, of itself, would have proved highly effective, has been

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rendered nearly null by its situation. In the multitudinous outrage
and horror of the rebellion, the one atrocity is utterly whelmed and
extinguished.

“ The reasons of this deflection from the first purpose appear to
us self-evident. One of them we have already mentioned. The
other is that our author discovered, when too late, that he had
anticipated , and thus rendered valueless , his chief effect. This will
be readily understood. The particulars of the assassination being
withheld, the strength of the narrator is put forth, in the beginning
of the story, to ichet curiosity in respect to these particulars ;
and so far he is but in proper pursuance of his main design. But
from his intention he unwittingly passes into the error of exaggerating
anticipation. And error though it be, it is an error wrought with
consummate skill. What, for example, could more vividly enhance
our impression of the unknown horror enacted than the deep
and enduring gloom of Haredale — than the idiot’s inborn awe of
blood — or, especially, than the expression of countenance so imagina-
tively attributed to Mrs. Rudge — ‘ the capacity for expressing
terror — something only dimly seen, but never absent for a moment —
the shadow of some look to which an instant of intense and most
unutterable horror only could have given rise ’ ? But it is a con-
dition of the human fancy that the promises of such words are
irredeemable. In the notice before mentioned we thus spoke
upon this topic :

“ * This is a conception admirably adapted to whet curiosity in
respect to the character of that event which is hinted at as forming
the basis of the story. But this observation should not fail to be
made — that the anticipation must surpass the reality ; that no
matter how terrific be the circumstances which, in the denouement,
shall appear to have occasioned the expression of countenance worn
habitually by Mrs. Rudge, still they will not be able to satisfy the
mind of the reader. He will surely bo disappointed. The skilful
intimation of horror held out by the artist produces an effect which
will deprive his conclusion of all. These intimations — these dark
hints of some uncertain evil — are often rhetorically praised as
effective — but are only justly so praised when there is no denoue-
ment whatever — where the reader’s imagination is left to clear up
the mystery for itself — and this is not the design of Mr. Dickens.'

“ And, in fact, our author was not long in seeing his precipitancy.
He had placed himself in a dilemma from which even his high genius
could not extricate him. He at once shifts the main interest —
and in truth we do not see what better he could have done. The
reader’s attention becomes absorbed in the riots, and he fails to
observe that what should have been the true catastrophe of the
novel is exceedingly feeble and ineffective.”

Poe then goes on to register a considerable number of Dickens’s
inconsistencies, none of which are really vital but all curious and
interesting, and the detection of which shows the author of “The
Raven ” to have been a critic of extraordinary acumen. His general
conclusion is thus set down :

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 303

“ The work before us is not, we think, equal to the tale which
immediately preceded it; but there are few — very few others to
which we consider it inferior. Our chief objection has not, perhaps,
been so distinctly stated as we could wish. That this fiction, or
indeed that any fiction written by Mr. Dickens, should be based
in the excitement and maintenance of curiosity we look upon as a
misconception, on the part of the writer, of his own very great yet
very peculiar powers. He has done this thing well, to be sure — he
would do anything well in comparison with the herd of his con-
temporaries — but he lias not done it so thoroughly well as his high
and just reputation would demand. We think that the whole book
has been an effort to him — solely through the nature of its design.
Ho has been smitten with an untimely desire for a novel path. The
idiosyncrasy of his intellect would lead him, naturally, into the
most fluent and simple style of narration. In tales of ordinary
sequence ho may and will long reign triumphant. He has a talent
for all things, but no positive genii/ <t for adaptation , and still less for
that metaphysical art in which the souls of all mysteries lie. Caleb
Williams is a far less noble work than The Old Curiosity Shop y but
Mr. Dickens could no more have constructed the one than Mr.
Godwin could have dreamed of the other . — P 6.

AMERICAN NOTES.

Wo solemnly declare, that any litterateur who had read Halli-
burton, Hamilton, Marryat, Trollope, Martincaii — to say nothing
of Stuart, Silk Buckingham, Tyrone Power, Robert Keeley, and
Fanny Kemble — might have written tho whole *'f the work Mr.
Dickens calls his own, without ever passing out of earshot of the
sound of Bow Bells. Candidly, however, wo confess, that after
tho labours of these persons, it would have been very difficult for
Mr. Dickens to have written anything new of America and the
Americans : and wo humbly consider the United States ought,
after what had already been done, to be regarded as peculiarly
tabooed ground to novelists and actors. . . . There is certainly
this to distinguish this book on America from all its predecessors,
and which recommends it potently to the multitudinous admirers
of “ Boz.” Though it contains nothing intrinsically new, everything
is made to wear a new face from the way in which it is painted, and
patched, and frizzed, and powdered, before it is brought upon the
stage. Everything is made to wear “ Boz’s ” peculiar colours, and is
stamped with his idiosyncrasy. . . . We do not know what else
we should bo disposed to say in favour of it. But this, we are
aware, will be taken as all-sufficing praise. — Fraser's Magazine ,
November 1842.

More vivid description, more life-like scenes, more distinct colour-
ing, a happier collection of words, and a more strikingly felicitous
use of images for tho writer’s particular purposes, it is impossible
to find or desire in any book. One necessary result is, that the most
familiar things, the subjects that have been handled hundreds of

304

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

times by voyagers and travellers, present in these pages new points,
and set the mind upon trains of cogitation and reflection that never
were suggested before. — Monthly Review , November 1842.

If not quite so versatile as the other writers who turned their
hand to anything, he [Samuel Warren] was always quite willing
to undertake anything that fell at all in his way. One of the
earliest of these articles was a review [in Blackwood's] of Dickens’s
American Notes , a little book which was treated as important at
that period w’lien everything produced by Dickens was so eagerly
looked for, which Warren offered to do in a most characteristic
letter :

“ October 28, 1842.

“ What say you to a review by me of Dickens's new book on
America — a fair, prudent, and real review ? Bearing in mind my
own position as a sort of honourable yit fearless rival of his. 1 have
just read forty pages. 1 could make it a first-rate affair. If
you have got no one else, drop me a line by return. If you can
rely on my judgment and tact, I can.

In the description of the voyage out is to be found, in my
opinion, a perfect specimen of Dickens's peculiar excellences and
faults. There is palpable genius ; subtle and vivid perceptions,
exquisite felicity of illustration and feeling and natural circum-
stances ; real humour, mannerism, exaggeration, glaring but un-
conscious egotism ano vanity, glimpses of under-breeding. Those
last I should touch on in a manly and delicate and generous spirit.
Rely on Sam Warren. I will do him good, and will make himself
acknowledge me a high-minded rival, a real friend.

“ From the glance I have given the book I think I shall on Ihe
whole be disappointed, for Dickens seems to have been equally
incapable and indisposed to look beyond the surface of American
manners and society.

“ Oh, what a book I could have written ! ! ! 1 mean I who

have not only observed but reflected so much on the characters of
the people of England and America.

li I should pledge myself to write* such a review as the public
have a right to accept from mo, and as would occasion you no
embarrassment if Dickens were ever staying in vour house. I
shall praise him very greatly for certain qualities with discrimina-
tion, and endeavour to give some useful hints to the shoal of popular
writers of the present day.” — 0.

Alas, how very sad it is to have [to acknowledge V] our own
feelings of chagrin and disappointment with which we have risen
from the perusal of these volumes of Mr. Dickens, and to express
our fears that such will be the result of the perusal of them by the
Americans ! We perceive in every step ho takes, in whatever he
says or does, and all that he has written, the blighting effects of
his original blunder in proclaiming beforehand his going to
America. It is so very flimsy a performance — we must speak the
disagreeable and painful truth — that nothing but our strong feel-

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 305

ings of kindliness and respect for a gentleman of his unquestionable
talents, and of gratitude for the amusement which his better and
earlier works have afforded us, could have induced us to bestow
the pains which were requisite to present so full an account of it
as that which we have above given our readers. — Blackwood's
Magazine , December 1842.

It is curious to be brought in sight of scraps of contemporary
criticisms, casting upon reputations now firmly established the
same doubtful and wavering light which now plays upon our con-
temporaries, reducing their chances of recognition by posterity
or enhancing them, according to the critic’s mood. There had
been a review of Dickens and his American Notes in the Magazine
by the hand of Mr. Warren, who considered himself the rival of
Dickens, and who had for the moment almost as great a reputa-
tion, backed up vigorously, we may well believe, by the stout
faction of 44 Maga.” The review was “ finely written,” according to
the opinion of Mr. Phillips, who adds his own ideas on the subject :

“ The close of Air. Dickens's literary career will, if I am not mis-
taken, be as full of useful warning as his rise was sudden and astound-
ing. The following more can is from a note of Air. Johnston’s (of
the Post), which 1 received a day or two ago, and which contains
sound criticism, lie says : 4 With regard to the new work of Mr.
Dickens, I have only read extracts, which seem to indicate more
of failure than of success, lie spoils what might be good by straining
after effect and mounting into the falsetto of exaggerated description
or inappropriate reflection. The fitness and natural relation of
things do not seem to be present to his mind, and his composition
appears to imply a want of literary education.’ ”

Put within an interval of a few days the writer changes his mind,
and that upon a most effectual argument :

“ 1 have this morning received a very flattering epistle from
4 ]>oz ’ on the subject of Caleb. He writes me thus : 4 Having begun
your story I cannot resist telling you at once that I think it excellent ,
and of great merit ; and that next week I promise myself the pleas-
ure of writing you again, and giving you my opinion more in detail.’
1 think I must retract all that I said to you against 4 Boz ’ in my
last letter ! ” — 0.

Lord Jeffrey, on the appearance of the first edition, wrote the
author a letter, in which lie says : 44 A thousand thanks for your
charming book, and for all the pleasure, profit, and relief it has
afforded me. You have been very tender to our sensitive friends
beyond the sea, and really said nothing which will give any serious
offence to any moderately rational patriot amongst them. The
slavers , of course, will give you no quarter, and of course you did
not expect they would. . . . Your account of the silent or solitary
imprisonment system is as pathetic and as powerful a piece of
writing as I have ever seen, and your sweet airy little snatch Gf the
little woman taking her new babe homo to her young husband,
and your manly and feeling appeal in behalf of the poor Irish, or

306

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

rather the affectionate poor of ail races and tongues, who are patient
and tender to their children, under circumstances whioh would
make half the exemplary parents, among the rich, monsters of
selfishness and discontent, remind us that we have still among us
the creator of Nelly and Smike, and the schoolmaster and his
dying pupil, and must continue to win for you still more of that
homage of the heart, that love and esteem of the just and the
good, which, though it should never be disjoined from them, should ,
I think you must already feel, be better than fortune or fame.”

Tom Hood, almost immediately upon its appearance, reviewed
the work, under the title of “ Boz in America.” In his happiest
vein of drollery, he conjectures that it would be impossible for
Mr. Boz to go to “ the States ” without losing all his English
characteristics, and returning to his friends a regular Down-East
Yankee . — H 4.

Two notices prefaced by the following editorial remark : “ As
an earnest of our disposition to do Mr. Dickens justice, and to let
him have fair play, we give two notices of his Notes— one from the
North, the other from the South, by which he may perceive that
they do not pass current in either section.”

^ First Notice . — In this work, we see a young and ardent English-
man, with a sensitive and benevolent heart, and a fancy which, with
balloon-like expansibility, inflates itself by vaporising the smallest
fact, and gives itself to the wildest and most rapid wanderings.
It is impossible that such a writer can really be truthful, however
great his determination to be so ; truth may be his purpose, but
imagination involuntarily touches the point of his pen.”

“ Secefnd Notice . — It is one of the most suicidal productions ever
deliberately published by an author who has the least reputation
to lose. Not that the whole work exhibits the impress of wilful
malignity and deliberate injustice towards a nation from which,
both as an author and a man, he has received the highest favours ;
but because it is utterly weak, frivolous, and inconclusive through-
out, adding another to the many proofs of the fact, that he who
attempts to perform a task, for which both his frame^f mind and
previous opportunities have rendered him unfit, can only succoed
in making himself ridiculous, and detracting from the real merit
which he may possess. As a writer of a peculiar class of fiction, and
master of the comic, ‘ Boz ’ has no rival ; but when, after a four-
months* run over a country like ours, he presumes to pass judg-
ment on our national character and institutions, amazement at his
audacity is only merged into pity for his folly, and the reader is
irresistibly reminded of a similar undertaking, which lie himself
has graphically described on the part of a certain Pickwick Club,
to perform the same service for the ‘ unexplored parishes * of
England. Although the greater part of this book should only
eall forth a pitying smile at the vanity and folly of its author, his
bitter assaults and foul calumnies in relation to an institution which
he has not troubled to understand in any of its bearings deserve the

WATTS’ CHARITY, FOR SIX POOR TRAVELLERS, ROCHESTER
From a if'iiter-cuiour by I’aul liraifdon

308

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

indignant scorn of an insulted and slandered people.’ * — Southern
Literary Messenger (Richmond, Va.), January 1843.

We have been greatly disappointed in the perusal of American
Notes . We are well aware that there are some defects in our social
organisation which might be hit off to advantage by a master-
hand, and we had hoped that Mr. Dickens’s keen perception of the
ludicrous would be exercised at our present expense, though for our
ultimate profit. The little information to be gleaned from these
two volumes, with few exceptions, might be gained much more
advantageously from the map and gazetteer. The perusal of them
has served chiefly to lower our estimate of the man, and to fill us
with contempt for such a compound of egotism, coxcombry, and
cockneyism. We regret that Mr. Dickens has published these
volumes, for they bear the mark of hasty composition, evince no
genius, add nothing to the author’s reputation as a writer, and
exhibit his moral character in a most undesirable light. — The Ncic
Englander (Boston and New York), January, 1843. Review by
J. P. Thompson.

AMERICAN NOTES AND MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.

There are some Englishmen who believe that we are still writhing
under the arraignment of our national follies contained in Dickens's
Martin Chuzzlnvit and American Notes. They do not realise that
the life, the social and economical conditions which Dic kens found
on his visit to the United States in 184*2 seem as strange and as
remote to the American of to-day as they do to the Englishman.
When he drew the pictures of Colonel Diver, Jefferson Brick, Major
Dawkins, Hannibal Chollop, Professor Mullitt, Generals Fladdoek
and Kettle, and the Honourable Elijah Pograrn, Dickens was no
doubt simply caricaturing in his own inimitable way certain types
and eccentricities which actually existed, or which he believed to
exist. But these types and ecc entricities have so completely passed
away that the manners and ideas of the Americans of .Martin
Chvzzleivit seem the manners and ideas of an entirely foreign and
remote people. Cant and pretence, the love of humbug and the
spirit of false democracy are undoubtedly to be found among us
now, but their expression is very different ; and were we brought
face to face with Colonel Diver and Jefferson Brick in the flesh,
we should no more understand them than we should understand the
presence of a herd of stampeding bulTaloes on Broadway or an
Indian encampment in the corridors of the Waldorf-Astoria. Mrs.
Trollope came to see us, and gave her impressions in The Domestic.
Manners of the Americans. Captain Marryat visited us, and his
printed opinion was not flattering. Thackeray was not over-fond
of “ those conceited Yankees.” But in no case have wo borne any
lasting ilDwill, and it was only in the caso of Mrs. Trollope and
Dickens that we felt even temporary irritation.

It would be absurd to attempt to deny that Dickens saw much
in America that deserved castigation, much that must have appealed

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 309

irresistibly to his keen sense of the ridiculous. On the other hand,
it would be impossible to pretend that the malice of Martin Chuzzlc-
wit and the American Notes was duo to any but petty causes. He
brought with him to America a fundamental dislike to the principle
of slavery, of which he had no personal knowledge, and a determina-
tion to have enacted an international copyright law. In this latter
aim he failed, and his utterances on the subject brought down upon
his head much bitter and unfair newspaper criticism. It was to
the sting of this failure and this criticism, and to the sense of personal
discomfort and irritation, rather than to any carefully studied con-
viction of our national unworthiness, that we owe the cordially bitter
and unfriendly tone of the two books which form the subject of the
present paper.

It was in New York that, in the midst of ovations, Dickens,
irritated by the newspaper comments on his speeches regarding
copyright, seems to have begun to dislike his entertainers. Some of
the newspapers went so far as openly to charge that he had come to
this country under false pretences, and that in reality he was making
the trip as the paid agent of an organisation of British authors ami
publishers. Then, too, his privacy was constantly being invaded.
He was continually being pestered by utterly impossible people.
Voluminous manuscripts came, whose modest authors requested
Dickens to read carefully, note any alterations and corrections he
thought proper, and requesting that ho superintend their publica-
tion in England. One letter came from the South asking an original
epitaph for the tombstone of an infant. Another solicited an
autograph copy of the lines to an “ Expiring Frog.” One lady from
New York wrote that many funny things had taken place in her
family, and many interesting and tragic events, and that she had
records for ono hundred years past. She proposed to furnish these
records, with explanations, to Mr. Dickens, for him to arrange and
rewrite and have them published in England, allowing him to divide
the profits equally with her. All theso little ephemeral exaspera-
tions must be taken into consideration. They go a long way toward
explaining, if not condoning, the spirit of injustice and hostility
in which Dickens sat down to the writing of Martin Chiizzlewit and
the American N.tte

Under the circumstances, the review* of the American Notes
which was printed in the North American Review for the first three
months of 1843 seems incomprehensibly favourable. After twelvo
or fourteen pages devoted to a highly eulogistic estimate of Mr.
Dickens’s work done previous to the American Notes , the writer
of the criticism discusses the Notes with great good-nature and
forbearance. Ho describes vividly the enthusiastic reception which
Mr. Dickens received everywhere throughout his American tour*
In treating of Mr. Dickens’s attitude in the international copyright
question, the writer takes up the cudgels in defence of our visitor
and against his own countrymen :

“ We coincide entirely with the views so well expressed by Mr.
Dickens, and approve of the manner in which he has developed

310

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

them. The attacks made upon the part of a portion of the news-
papers for the course he saw fit to take on this subject (that of
international copyright) were unjust, false, virulent and vulgar,
discreditable to the taste and temper and disagreeable to the
characters of their authors. One of the most generous and dis-
interested of men, he had come to this country to seek, among a
people by whom his genius was approved and admired, relaxation
from long and severe intellectual toil. He was charged with the
meanest mercenary motives simply because he had the independence
to urge the claims of justice. We must say in behalf of all honour-
able men connected with the Press, that to defend the character
of Mr. Dickens from such poor attacks would be a work of superero-
gation indeed. . . . We had a right to expect from him not a
didactic work, but a book full of graphic details, good feeling and
pleasant observation, and in this expectation we have not been
disappointed. Many of his descriptions have given offence in
various quarters. Some people seem to think that fault of manners,
or an offence of social arrangements, or an awkward or a disagreeable
habit as described by a visitor is meant to be classed as something
peculiar to them. Thus, Dickens’s pictures of the discomforts
of canal -boats and stage-coaches — though all who have ever felt
them acknowledge the striking fidelity of his pencil — are supposed
to be meant as satires upon American civilisation in particular,
and as if such things are found nowhere else ; and not a little very
excellent wrath has been expended upon him on that most gratuitous
supposition. We have heard no defence set up against the charge
of tobacco chewing and spitting. In these two pleasant habits we
suppose we stand, by general consent and by our own admission,
pre-eminent among the nations of the earth. The picture he draws
of the character of the American newspaper Press, largely coloured
as it is, does not surpass the truth when applied to the power — a
very large power it must be confessed — of the metropolitan papers.
He does not make sufficiently emphatic exceptions and distinctions,
and when he comes to speak of the universality of its evil influence,
its omnipotence and omnipresence, his vigorous, startling, and almost
terrific language is quite too unqualified. We have no faith in the
existence of such a demoniac power as that he describes. The
profligate papers, numerous as they are and widely as their circula-
tion ranges, neither express nor guide nor govern what can with any
propriety be called the public opinion of the country. They may
open their foul mouths in full cry upon a man of character year
after year, and through every State in the Union, but they can
harm him no more than the idle wind. They are read, despised,
and the next day utterly forgotten. Their cowardly malice,
their ignorant vulgarity and profligacy overshoot the mark.”

A somewhat different, but by no means severe, tone runs through
the review of Martin Chuzzlewit , which appeared in the Knicker -
bocker Magazine for September 1844 :

“ With much that is unworthy of Mr. Dickens, much that he
will live to regret if he is not already sorry for, Martin ChuzdewU

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 311

contains some of the most striking scenes and the most vivid portrait-
ures of character that have ever been sketched by the author’s facile
and felicitous pen. We pass by his pretended morals and manners
of the United States. They are for the most part characterisations
so gross as to be incapable of exciting any emotion save one in the
mind of any American reader. Once or twice, it is true, he touches
us in the raw. ... It is in home portraitures that Dickens is the
most successful when in relation to scenes and characters. What
could bo more graphic than his description of Todgers’s, the mercan-
tile boarding-house ? It is a finished picture of the Flemish school.
As for old Pecksniff, the portrait could not be exceeded. Selfish,
deceitful, with sufficient cunning to acquire a reputation for being
the reverse of what he really is, we follow his progress with deep
interest, and exult in the retribution which closes his sinuous
career.”

Tho Quarterly Review for the three months beginning with March
1843, in its review of American Notes , says that both Englishmen
and Americans should consider that our common origin and language,
which theoretically ought to be a bond of moral connection, are
in practice very liable to produce a hostile and jealous spirit between
tho two nations : “ The mutual language, then, becomes a double
weapon : the common fountain overflows on either side with the
water's of bitterness. We think that in discussing this subject on
some former occasion we said that when people write or talk against
one another in different languages they are like boxers sparring
in stuffed gloves, but when the English and Americans squabble
in their common tongue, it is like hitting home >rith the naked fist—
their blow gives a black eye or a bloody nose. It was, therefore,
we confess, with no particular pleasure that we learned w-e were to
have a picture of America from the pen of Mr. Dickens. Mr. Dickens
is, as everybody knows, tho author of some popular stories published
originally in periodicals. Remarkable as has been the exploita-
tions of very low life — treated, however, generally speaking, with
bettor taste and less vulgarity than the subjects seem to promise —
we must say, en passant, that we have very little taste for the class
of novels that take their heroes from Newgate and St. Giles.
Even in the powerful hands of Fielding, Jonathan Wild has always
both disgusted and wearied us.”

Tho Quarterly scores Dickens roundly for ignoring objects of
beauty and preferring to deal with what was petty and ludicrous :

“ Instead of seeing in the streets of New York specimens of fine
architecture Mr. Dickens tells us with much detail that he saw,
besides tho * mulatto landlady,’ a ‘ fiddler, one barrel-organ, one
dancing monkey ’ ; and, he adds, ‘ not one white mouse.’ All this,
wo presume, is meant for pleasantry, but indeed the utter inanity
of Mr, Dickens’s pages, the total lack of information or even rational
argument, is not more to be regrotted than the awkward efforts of
jocularity with which ho endeavours to supply their places. We
might in return be very facetious in expressing Mr. Dickens’s bad
taste, but we prefer seriously to remonstrate with him on nonsense

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DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

so deplorable that we are almost ashamed to give one other specimen.
We have already stated that of tho account of New York a few lines
only are given to a general view of society in that city, while several
pages were employed on the latest and most trivial topics. But
our readers will hardly be prepared for such stupid puerility as we
have now to produce. It seems that the streets of the metropolis
are much frequented by pigs. This gives Mr. Dickens t-lie oppor-
tunity of taking up not merely the subject of pigs in general, but to
one individual and selected pig three pages of his American A T otes is
devoted, being, we calculate, six times more space than he has given
to all the prominent orators, litterateurs, artists and heroes of
America altogether.”

Tne following is from the Edinburgh Review for January 1843 :

“ Though Mr. Dickens does not tell us of it, it is a notorious fact
that throughout every State in the United States he was besieged
by the whole host of lion hunters, whose name in that land of
liberty and equality is legion. In England we 'preserve our lions.
To be admitted to the sight of one except on public occasions is a.
privilege granted only to the select. In America (always excepting
a skin of the right colour) the pursuit of this kind of game requires
no qualifications whatever, for, though society seems to form itself
there, just as it does with us, into a series of circles, self-distinguished
and excluded one from the other, there does not appear to bo any
generally acknowledged scale of social dignity. Each circle may
assert its own pretensions and act upon them, but they are not
binding upon the rest. In the eye of the law and of the universe a
citizen is a citizen, and as such has a right to do the honour of the
country to a stranger. And though there are, doubtless, many
circles in which the stranger is pitied for having to receive such
promiscuous attentions, there is none which seems to consider itself
excluded from the privilege of offering them. Though the book
is said to have given great offence on the other side of the Atlantic,
we cannot see any sufficient reason for it.”

Two of the severest contemporary critics of Dickens’s American
Notes were Macaulay and Dc Tocqueville, the latter of whom had
journeyed extensively in and written much about the United States.
When in the French Chamber of Deputies reference was made to
Dickens’s book on America, De Tocqueville ridiculed the idea that
any opinions of Dickens’s on the matter should be. quoted as in
any respect authoritative. Macaulay, who had written to Napier,
the editor of the Edinburgh Review, asking permission to review tho
new book when it should be ready, withdrew his request as soon as
he had seen it. “ This morning,” he writes to Napier, 19th October
1842, “ I received Dickens’s book. ... I cannot praise it, and I
will not cut it up. It seems to me to be on the whole a failure.
It is written like the worst parts of Humphrey 1 $ Clock, Wbat
is meant to be easy and sprightly is vulgar and flippant. I pro-
nounce the book, in spite of some claims of genius, frivolous and
•dull.” — Arthur Bartlett Maurice, in The Bookman (New York), April
1903.

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 313

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.

Sydney Smith, delighted in the way in which the Americans
were pasquinaded, sent Dickens these familiar notes on the merits
of the book :

“ You have been so used to such impertinences that I believe you
will excuse me for saying how very much pleased I am with the fit's t
number of your new work. Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch,
are admirable — quite flrst-rato painting, such as no one but yourself
can execute. I did not like your genealogy of the Chuzzlewits, and
I must wait a little to see how Martin turns out. I am impatient
for the next number.

“ P.S . — Chuff ey is admirable. I have never read a finer piece of
writing ; it is deeply pathetic and affecting. Your last number
is excellent.”

Then, again, under date 12th July 1843, in acknowledgment of a
call from Dickens, and after the receipt of a new number of Martin
Chuzzhwit , he writes :

“ Excellent ! nothing can be better ! You must settle it with
the Americans as you can, but I have nothing to do with it. I have
only to certify that the number is full of wit, humour, and power of
description .” — II 4.

To display the destructive effects of avarice and the depravity
of selfishness, on the one hand, and the beauty of benevolence, of
kindness on the other, is evidently the aim of the worthy writer
of Martin Chuzzlewit ; and happily the weapons which he uses
to accomplish his good purpose are of so effectual a nature as to
strip the one of its fancied advantages, and in vest the other with
a lasting and attractive splendour. How thoroughly disgusted
must our author be with his experiences of that land of enlightened
liberty — America ! ho could not suffer this opportunity to pass
without showering ids heavy sarcasm at their hollow pretensions
and professions. Surely if Jefferson Brick and Elijah Pogram are
in any degree true specimens of American politicians and states-
men, wo can with gratitude reflect on our much superior position. —
Monthly Review , September 1814.

We venture to think this is the most brilliant and entertaining
of all the works of Mr. Dickens, and his most characteristic work.
Mr. Dickens is, however, principally known to the public as a comio
writer ; and, like inferior comic writers, he sometimes carries
comic writing to an unpleasant length. There is a peculiar style
which ho has introduced into English composition, and vrhich
consists in giving what is conventionally accepted as a funny
turn to language, without there being any fun whatever in the
thought. The contest betw een the matter and the style is pain-
fully marked, and the opening chapter of Martin Chuzzlewit is
one of the very worst things Mr. Dickens has written. The reason is
because it is entirely aw r ay from the story, and is all about nothing.
The fun is entirely in the language, and the funny language i»
as flat as funny language about nothing is apt to be. In order to*

314

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

mark off his less prominent characters, he is apt to select one salient
external feature in their appearance, to which he makes constant
reference, or he introduces them as perpetually making use of
some phrase by which they are to be recognised. Mrs. Gamp is
among the very best creations of Mr. Dickens. We should venture
to pronounce it the best of all, only that those decrees of the critic
are not generally very valuable or acceptable to other people. —
National Review , July 1841.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

The following letter [was written in December 1843] to its author
by Lord Jeffrey :

“ Blessings on your kind heart, my dear Dickens, and may it
always be as full and as light as it is kind, and a fountain of kind-
ness to all within reach of its beatings. We are all charmed with
your Carol ; chiefly, I think, for the genuine goodness which breathes
all through it, and is the true inspiring angel by which its genius
has been awakened. The whole scene of the Cratchits is like the
dream of a beneficent angel, in spite of its broad reality, and little
Tiny Tim, in life and death almost as sweet and as touching as
Nelly. . . . Well, to be sure, you should be happy yourself ; for
you may be sure you have done more good, and not only fastened
more kindly feelings, but prompted more positive acts of benevol-
ence, by this little publication, than can be traced to all the pulpits
and confessionals since Christmas 1842 .” — II 4.

Who can listen to objection regarding such a book as this ? It
seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who
reads it a personal kindness. The last two people I heard speak
of it were women ; neither knew the other or the author, and both
said by way of criticism, “ God bless him ! ” What a feeling is this
for a writer to be able to inspire, and what a reward to reap !—
W. M. Thackeray.

If in every alternate work that Mr. Dickens sent to the London
Press he should find occasion to indulge in ridicule against alleged
American peculiarities, or broad caricatures of our actual vanities,
or other follies, we should with the utmost cheerfulness pass them
by unnoted and uncondemned, if he would only now and then
present us with an intellectual creation so touching and beautiful
as the one before us. Indeed, we can with truth say that, in
our deliberate judgment, the Christmas Carol is the most striking,
the most picturesque, the most truthful of all the liranings which
have proceeded from its author’s pen . — The Knickerbocker (New
York), March 1844.

It was a blessed inspiration that put such a book into the head
of Charles Dickens ; a happy inspiration of the heart, that warms
every page. It is impossible to road, without a glowing bosom
and burning cheeks, between love and shame for our kind, with

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM, 315

perhaps a little touch of misgiving whether we are not personally
open, a crack or so, to the reproach of Wordsworth —

“The world is too much with us, late and soon,

Getting and spending,”

whether our own heads have not become more inaccessible, our
hearts more impregnable, our ears and eyes more dull and blind
to sounds and sights of human misery ; if our Charitv altogether is
not too much of a Clari, thinking of home, home, home, and no
place but home. In a word, whether we have not grown Scroogey ?
— Hood's Magazine , January 1844.

THE CHIMES.

There are few men (besides Dickens) who can so successfully
work out an effective tale from slender materials. His graphic
powers are unsurpassed. A suggestion, a more hint, suffices for his
purpose : there is no elaboration needed, no long array of person-
ages or complexity of plot. A sentence, or even a word, an old
church, a wretched dwelling, a garret or a cellar, a pampered menial,
or a half-starved and trembling beggar, accomplishes his design.
ITe sets before us, without apparent effort, in all the distinctness
and vivid colouring of actual life, the scene or character which he
wishes to describe. We behold the street, the wretched court, the
dilapidated staircase, the cold and unfurnished garret to which he
introduces us, or talk and exchange looks with the persons whom
he brings on the stage. The truthfulness of his sketches is not
outward and superficial. It descends to the inner man, embraces
the qualities of the individual, and sets him before us in all the
minute as well as the more prominent features of his person and
character. This constitutes a leading element in the popularity
of Mr. Dickens, and is illustrated in several instances in the volume
before us. — Eclectic Review , January 1845.

We prefer it to the Christmas Carol ; like that, it is a vision, but
of a more condensed and earnest character. We may say, once
for all, that it is long since we read prose or poetry which pleased
us more. There is ono want, however, which we must be excused
for observing. Wo fear Mr. Dickens’s spirits are too earthly to be
real visitors from another world. They seem to think too much
of the creature comforts of Christmas, and to have forgotten alto-
gether the higher and holier influences of the season — to place the
enjoyment of the Christmas time in the mirth and jollity which
accompany it — in the beef, and poultry, and pudding — the games
and puzzles and forfeits of the evening fireside — without once
adverting to the Christian character of the festival, or the joy of
spirit ana peace of conscience which constitute its true and genuine^
happiness. — Dublin Review , December 1844.

When you write to Mr. Dickens, remember us most kindly to
him. I have made many persons buy The Chimes who were afraid
it was not amusing, and made them ashamed of expecting nothing

316

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

better, nothing greater, from such a writer. They can laugh
until their sides ache over Mrs. Gamp, but they dread weeping over
dear good Trotty, that personification of goodness ; sweet Meg, the
beau-id6al of female excellence ; poor Lilian, and the touching but
stern reality of Bill Fern, which beguiled me of so many tears. We
should pity such minds, yet they make us too angry for pity. I
have read The Chimes a third time, and found it as impossible
to repress my tears when perusing the last scene between Meg
and Lilian as at the first. — Lady Blessington, 1845.

THE BATTLE OF LIFE.

If Mr. Dickens really believes that a modest and discreet young
lady could leave a ballroom on a winter night ; make off w r ith t he
greatest rake in the parish ; take refuge in the old lady’s, her
aunt’s ; remain there concealed for a number of years — half a
dozen — leaving for a long period her nearest relatives in anxiety
for her fate, and her former neighbours in no doubt regarding her
character — from no other motive than merely to give her elder
sister an opportunity of marrying her lover; and if his numerous
readers imagine the story within the range of probabilities, or the
conduct of the heroine worthy of imitation, we have nothing to say
between them, except that the engravings of the volume are well
executed. — Tati's Edinburgh Magazine , January 1847.

PICTURES FROM ITALY.

A production like this, exhibiting, from beginning to end, such
extreme narrowness, littleness, one-sidedness of mind ; so much
Cockney trifling and sneering on topics regarded by a hundred and
fifty millions of Christians as of a solemn and sacred character —
that such a production should have come to us, under the sanction
of a name so honoured by us, and, as we fondly thought, so deserv-
ing of honour, has confounded and shocked us more than we can
express. The first thing that would strike an impartial reader
of this book — a reader fully prepared to adopt whatever views,
favourable or unfavourable, might be borne out by the unexception-
able testimony — i3, that it is the work of a light-headed, giggling
person, rambling about in quest of mere amusement and excitement,
accustomed to view and capable of understanding only a certain
ridiculous aspect which his own fancy creates in everything about
him ; to whom laughing is living, and to tickle and to be tickled
by wit’s feather th3 highest enjoyment of human existence. —
Dublin Review, September 1840.

[The reviewer adversely criticises Dickens for his “ unpleasant ”
way of looking at everything Roman Catholic.]

DOMBEY AND SON.

Having been absent a second time from London, I returned to
it soon after the appearance of No. 1 of the Latter-Day Pamphlets .
I found Carlyle in one of his sternest moods. ... A single gleam

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 317

of humour did for a moment lighten the gloom of his denunciations
of idle pauperism, Poor-Law relief, charitable dole-giving, and all
the rest of it. He illustrated his attitude towards them by citing
what he spoke of as “ one of the drollest things that ever came from
Dickens.” When on the occasion of Mr. Dombey’s second marriage
he enters the church in which it is to be solemnised, attired in a
new blue coat, fawn-coloured pantaloons, and lilac waistcoat,
Mr. Toots, surveying the scene from the gallery, informs in an
undertone his neighbour and friend the Chicken that this gorgeous
personage is the bridegroom. The confident pugilist hoarsely
whispers in reply that Mr. Dombey is “ as stiff a cove as ever he see,
but that it is within the resources of science to double him up, with
one blow in the waistcoat.” Carlyle, with grim glee, boasted
(rashly, it has turned out) that fashionable and complacent as was
the Philanthropy of the day, it was within the resources of his
science to “ double it up ! ” — Francis Espinasse. E.

Writing in January 1847, the novelist said, “ Paul's death has
amazed Paris.” Lord Jeffrey wrote to the novelist at this time,
u Oh, my dear, dear Dickens ! Avhat a No. 5 you have given us ! I
have so cried and sobbed over it last night, and again this morning :
and felt my heart purified by those tears, and blessed and loved
you for making me shed them ; and 1 can never bless and love
you enough. Since t he divine Nelly was found dead on her humble
couch, beneath the snow and the ivy, there has been nothing like*
the actual dying of that sweet Paul, in the summer sunshine of that
lofty room. And the long vista that leads us so "ently and sadly,
and yet so gracefully and winningly, to the plain consummation ! ”
— K 1.

DAVID (JOrPEHFIKLD.

David Copper field is, in our opinion, the best of all the author’s
fictions. We have several reasons for suspecting that, here and
there, under the name of David Copperfield, we have been favoured
with passages from the personal history, adventures and experience
of Charles Dickens. — Frasers Magazine , December 1850.

It is impossible to concede to David Copper field the standing of
a Avork of high art, nor do we + hink that such a standing has been,
or will be, seriously claimed for it. It has not, to our thinking, any
of the higher qualities of art : its texture and style are loose with
the looseness of mere panorama painting : and its humanity, though
often simple and Avholesome, is at innumerable points altogether
distorted and unwholesome. And yet avo are told that this is
Dickens’s masterpiece : and Ave admit the position. — London
Quarterly Review , January 1871.

One author that Alphonse did not read when a youth was Charles
Dickens, and this is a fact that must be put on record, for super-
ficial critics have described his work in general, and his novel Le
Petit Chose in particular, as an imitation of, or at least inspired

318

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

by, the English writer. The only true comparison which can
be made between Charles Dickens and Alphonse Daudcb
is that in appearance they were not unlike, that Alphonse,
like Charles, had a Micawbor-like father and youth, and that
certain events in the life of the French writer seemed to be the
enactment in real life of events imagined and described by the
English [novelist. David Copper field was written in 1849-50, when
Alphonse was in the full tide of his Micawber experiences. It had
been published six years when Mell-like usher experiences came
to the young Frenchman. Alphonse Daudet is rather sensitive
* about criticisms implying plagiarism, and quite recently affirmed
to the writer on his word of honour that at the time when he
wrote Le Petit Chose he had not read a line of Dickens. . . .
From the experiences of a Micawber, he was about to pass to
those of a Mr. Mell, to whom even a Steer forth, in the person of a
loutish Cevenol lad, was not to be wanting. And be it noticed
how much in the life of Alphonse Daudet resembles the career of
David Copperfield. The coincidence of this similarity between
the life of the young French lad and that of the imagined hero of
an English novel is so strange that many superficial and malevolent
critics have accused Daudet of something akin to plagiarism in his
novel Le Petit Chose , which in its salient particulars is a true record
of his own experiences. And apropos of this criticism, this is what
Alphonse Daudet, who feels strongly on the subject, has to say :

An author who writes in accordance with his eyes and the dictates
of his conscience can have no answer to make to such a criticism,
unless it be that there bo certain kinships of imagination for which
no author is responsible, and that, on the great day on which men
and novelists were created, Nature, in an absent-minded mood,
may easily have mixed up her moulds. 1 feel in my heart the
love which Dickens felt for the poor and the disinherited, for
troubled childhoods, and all the miseries of life in big cities. Like
him, my first steps in life were heart-rondingly unhappy ; like
him, I was forced to earn my bread before 1 was sixteen years of
age, and in this I imagine lies our greatest resemblance.” — Robert
Harborbugh Sherard, in Alphonse Daudet .

BLEAK HOUSE.

Bleak House would be a heavy book to read through at once,
as a properly constructed novel ought to bo read. But we must
plead guilty to having found it dull and wearisome as a serial,
though certainly not from its want of cleverness or .point. On the
contrary, almost everybody in the book is excessively funny that
is not very wicked or very miserable. The love of strong effect,
and the habit of seizing peculiarities and presenting them instead
of characters, pervade Mr. Dickens’s gravest and most amiable
portraits as well as those expressly intended to be ridiculous and
grotesque. His heroine in Bleak house is a model of unconscious
goodness, sowing love and reaping it wherever she goes, diffusing
round her an atmosphere of happiness and a sweet perfume of a

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 319

pure and kindly nature. Her unconsciousness and sweet humility of
disposition are so profound that scarcely a page of her autobiography
is free from a record of these admirable qualities. With delightful
naivetd she writes down the praises that are showered upon her on
all hands ; and it is impossible to doubt the simplicity of her nature,
because she never omits to assert it with emphasis. This is not
only coarse portraiture, but utterly untrue and inconsistent. Such
a girl would not write her own memoirs, and certainly would not
bore one with her goodness till a wicked wish arises that she would
either do something “spicy” or confine herself to superintending
the jam-pots at Bleak House. Poor Jo, tho street-sweeping
urchin, is drawn with a skill that is never more effectively exercised
than when the outcasts of humanity are its subjects ; a skill which
seems to depart in proportion as the author rises in the scale of
society depicted. Dickens has never yet succeeded in catching a
tolerable likeness of man or woman whose lot is cast among the
higli-bom and wealthy. Whether it is that the lives of such present
less that is outwardly funny or grotesque, less that strikes tho eye
of a man on the look-out for oddity and point, or that he knows
nothing of their lives, certain it is that his people of station are the
vilest daubs ; and Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with his wife
and family circle, are no exceptions. Clever he undoubtedly is;
many of his portraits excite pity, and suggest tho existence of crying
social sins ; but of almost all we are obliged to say that they border
on and frequently reach caricature, of which the essence is to catch
a striking likeness by exclusively selecting and exaggerating a
peculiarity that makes tho man but does not represent him. —
Spectator, September 24, 1853 [review by George Brimiey].

The gem of Bleak House is “ poor Jo,” the crossing-sweeper,
hapless representative of a class whose very existence from genera-
tion cries shame on the land in which they dwell. We should not
do justice to our own feelings, nor to the book under notice, if
we did not indicate our opinion that os an artist Mr. Dickens is not
perfect ; while as a teacher his lessons are not always to be relied
on. One of tho faults with which he may be charged is that of
exaggeration. Mr. Dickens has found it convenient before to intro*
duce the ministers of Bethels, Zions, and Ebenezers to his readers ;
and we regret that he has not been charitable enough to give a
fairer example of them than is found in Mr. Chadband, a man whose
principal characteristics are, speaking abominable English, stuffing
himself with hot muffins, drinking we know not how many cups of
tea, and rejoicing when he can get a stiff portion of a stronger
beverage. We suppose Mr. Dickens has not had opportunities
for judging fairly of tho men whom ho caricatures. We advise him
to leave them alone, and to eschew allusions to matters which are
beyond his reach. We understand what he means ; and we con
tefl him that the violation of good taste, by what better informed
people know to be scandalously false and mischievous insinua-
tions, reflects no credit on his intelligence, and can gratify none but

320

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

the ignorant and irreligious in any rank of life. — Eclectic Review t
December 1853.

As a delineator of persons, and the creator of distinct types of
humanity, he [Dickens] stands second only to Shakespeare ; while
in fertility of invention he is fully the equal of the great poet of
humanity. Such are the attractive and winning graces of his style,
that he can, when character and incident fail him, always secure
the reader’s attention bv mere profuseness of riotous rhetoric,
which has no other use than that of diverting his reader. There
are pages and pages of such writing in Bleak House , as there are in
many of his other marvellous productions. Marvellous they are
beyond dispute, for it is a wonderful power that enables a writer,
who has nothing new to tell the world, whose stylo has lost its
novelty, if not its charm, to keep possession of the attention of the
reading world through twenty months, while he is doling out to them,
every thirty days, bits of a story which in itself has hardly any
intrinsic interest. In Bleak House , Dickens exhibits his greatest
defects, and his greatest excellences, as a novelist ; in none of his
works are the characters more strongly marked, or the plot more
loosely or inartistically constructed. One half of the personages
might be ruled out without their loss being perceived, for, although
they are all introduced with a flourish, as though they had an
important part to perform, yet there would be no halt in the story if
they were dropped by the way, as some of them are. — Putnam's
Monthly Magazine (New York), November 1853 [review by C. F.
Riggs],

There is no great writer living who affords a stronger proof of the
danger of disregarding the Horatian maxim — nocturna versale manu 9
versate diurna — than Mr. Dickens. His books bear upon their face
abundant evidence of the manner of their composition ; all are
plainly written cur rente calamo. fn point of literary merit we think
Bleak House is a falling-off from its predecessors. In fact, ever
since Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop, we are of the
opinion that Mr. Dickens’s works have declined in interest. That
they are all clever is not to be denied ; people would not endure, the
continual jargon in which the tale is told, wore it not that the mass
is leavened by constant sprightliness of thought, and not unfre-
quently by exhibitions of positive genius. — North American Review
(Boston), October 1853.

At length our anxiety is relieved, our fearful excitement quieted !
Mr. Charles Dickens has shut up Bleak House, and put the key in
his pocket. The curtain has fallen on the last and twentieth act
of the interesting melodrama : the novel Bleak House is ended.
The final catastrophe is not so alarmingly strong as might have
been expected. In fact, wo were rather disappointed at not getting
something more startling as a finale from a gentleman who had —
(1) Killed Mr. Krook, by spontaneous combustion ; (2) poisoned off
a mysterious opium-eater and law-writer ; (3) sent a mad Chancery
suitor beyond the troubles of this world and all earthly litigation %.

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 321

(4) “ moved on ” poor Jo to such an extent, that he had (as the
spirit-rappers say) begun to move “ in quite another sphere ; ”

(5) caused a lady of fashion to die at the door of a graveyard ; (6) made
a French lady’s-maid shoot old Mr. Tulkinghorn, the attorney,
with an old Roman in fresco for her accomplice — not to mention
the death of a baby or two, with some less important characters,
and a young lady’s beauty destroyed by the small -pox, scarcely
the least cruel feature of Mr. Dickens’s most murderous system of
novelism ! Well, after all this slaughter of men, women, babies,
and beauty, we certainly did expect a consistent ending to so con-
sistent a beginning and middle. But Mr. Dickens laughs at con-
sistency. lie writes on as hard as he can, without looking behind
him, till he finds that he has full a couple of sheets to wind up in.
Now r , in the space of two sheets, a dexterous author might surely
kill off the balance of his personages, leaving, of course, one alive to
tell the fatal story. Eugene Sue would have done it in a page if
necessary. We could have done it ourselves in a sheet, even though
>ve had resorted to the boldest devices; such, for example, as an
earthquake, a plague, a famine, or any other form of battle, murder,
and sudden death. But Dickens fails ingloriously at the conclusion
of his campaign. “ He caves in,” if wo may use the expression in a
solemn critical article, and not only leaves the young lady, whose
autobiography he writes, alive (though marked with small-pox),
but actually married and happy. Dickens is — to use a German
formula— a terrible objective writer. He describes the external,
as an indication of the internal ; but profound analysis of thought
or feeling is strange to him. He hardly draws his characters from
a just point of view. He takes them as they may be, or appear to
be, and gives as it were a hasty impression. Get up, someone, and
write a match against Buhver and Dickens ! In sober earnest, it
is not half so ditlicult as it looks . — United States Magazine and
Democratic Review (New York), September 1853.

HARD TIMES.

At the very commencement of Hard Times, we find ourselves
introduced to a set of hard, uncouth personages, of whose existence
as a class no one is aware, who are engaged in cutting and paring
young souls after their own ugly pattern, and refusing them all other
nourishment but facts and figures. The unpleasant impression
caused by being thus suddenly introduced into this cold and un-
congenial atmosphere is never effaced by the subsequent charm
of narrative and well-painted characters of the tale. His characters,
even when they are only of the bourgeois class, are nearly always
furnished with some peculiarity, which, like the weight of a Dutch
clock, is their ever-gravitating principle of action. The consequence
is, they have, most of them, the appearance of puppets which Mr.
Dickons lias constructed expressly for his present purpose. Mr.
Bounderby, for example, is a most outrageous character ; who can
believe in the possibility of such a man ? — Westminster Review,
October 1854.
n

322

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Writing to Mrs. Pollock, 5th August 1854, Macready said, “ Have
you looked at the last cruel number of Hard Times . The heart-
breaking conclusion of it should justify our sending a round-robin
of remonstrance to Dickens.” — Macready’s Reminiscences .

The essential value and truth of Dickens's writings have been
unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because
he presents his truth with some colour of caricature. Unwisely,
because Dickens’s caricature, though often gross, is never mistaken.
Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are
always true. I wish that he could think it right to limit his brilliant
e x agg e ration to works written only for public amusement ; and
when he takes up a subject of high national importance, such as
that which he handled in Hard Times , that ho would use severer
and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of the work (to my
mind, in several respects the greatest he has written) is with many
people seriously diminished, because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic
monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly master ;
and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a char-
acteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose
the use of Dickens’s wit and insight because he chooses to speak in a
circle of stage fire. He is entirely light in his main drift and purpose
in every book he has written ; and all of them, but especially Hard
Times , should be studied with close and earnest care by persons
interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial,
and, because partial, apparently unjust ; but if they examine all the
evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it
will appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the finally
right one, grossly and sharply told. — John Rusk in, in Unto This
Last .

LITTLE DORRIT.

In the Edinburgh Review , July 1857, appeared a long criticism
of Little Dorrity which was considered in conjunction with Charles
Reades It's Never Too Late to Mend and Mrs. GaskelTs Life of
Charlotte Bronte. The reviewer condemns the influence which
certain novels exercise over the moral and political opinions of the
young, the ignorant, and the inexperienced, and contends that the
first and second of the novels referred to tend to beget hasty general-
isations and false conclusions, “ In every new novel,” says the
reviewer, “ Dickens selects one or two of the popular cries of the
day, to serve as seasoning to the dish which ho sets before his readers.
Even the catastrophe in Little Dorr it is evidently borrowed from the
recent fall of houses in Tottenham Court Road, which happens to
have appeared in the newspapers at a convenient moment.” Pro-
ceeding, the writer denounces Dickens’s “ imputations against the
Government, the judges, and private individuals, so grave, so
unjust, so cruel, that we think it is the duty of criticism to expose
them.” He goes on to ridicule the phrase about “ the Circum-
locution Office,” and to cite the case of Mr. Rowdand Hill, asking*

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 323

Did the Circumlocution Office neglect him, traduce him, break
his heart, and ruin his fortune ? They adopted his scheme, and
gave him the leading share in carrying it out, and yet this is the
Government which Mr. Dickens declares to be a sworn foe to
talent, and a systematic enemy to ingenuity.”

In an article entitled “ Curious Misprint in the Edinburgh Review ,”
in Household Words, 1st August 1857, Dickens refuted these criti-
cisms, and pointed out that, so far as the fall of houses in Tottenham
Court Road was concerned, on a critical examination of the pages of
Little Dorrit , it would be seen that the catastrophe referred to there
was “ carefully prepared for from the very first presentation of the
old house in the story, and was in proof before the accident in the
Tottenham Court Road occurred.” He went on to allude to the
case of Mr. Rowland Hill : tl The curious misprint here is the name
of Mr. Rowland Hill ” ; and proves that the Government had treated
him in the manner of the Circumlocution Office, and if he had not
been “in toughness a man of a hundred thousand the Circum-
locution Office would have made a dead man of him long and long
ago,” while, after it had adopted his penny postage scheme, “ it
summarily dismissed Mr. Rowland Hill altogether ! ” Dickens
concluded by hinting that the Edinburgh Review should correct
this curious misprint and substitute the right name, and, moreover,
should also “ take its next opportunity of manfully expressing its
regret that in too distempered a zeal for the Circumlocution Office,
it has been betrayed, as to the Tottenham Court Road assertion,
into a hasty substitution of untruth for truth.”

In the Edinburgh Review, October 1857, appeared the following :
“ In answer to some of the remarks contained in our review r of Little
Dorrit, Mr. Dickens states, in the Household Words of the 1st of
August, that the catastrophe of that talo formed part of his original
plan, and was not suggested by a contemporary occurrence. The
coincidence we pointed out was therefore accidental.”

A TALE OP TW T 0 CITIES.

In A Tale of Tux? Cities Mr. Dickens has reached the Castle
Dangerous stage without Sir Walter Scott's excuse ; and instead
of wholesome food ill-dressed, ho has put before his readers dishes
of which the quality is not disguised by the cooking. It would
perhaps bo hard to imagine a clumsier or more disjointed frame-
work for the display of the tawdry wares which form Mr. Dickens’s
stock-in-trade. The broken - backed way in w hich the story
maunders along from 1775 to 1792, and back again to 1760 or
thereabouts, is an excellent instance of the complete disregard of
the rules of literary composition which liavo marked tho whole of
Mr. Dickens’s career as an author. No portion of his popularity
is due to intellectual excellence. The higher pleasures which novels
are capable of giving are those which are derived from the develop-
ment of a skilfully constructed plot, or the careful and moderate
delineation of character ; and neither of these is to bo found in Mr.
Dickens’s works, nor has his influence over his contemporaries had

324 DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

the slightest tendency to promote tho cultivation by others of the
qualities which produce them. The two main sources of his popu-
larity are his power of working upon the feelings by the coarsest
stimulants, and his power of setting common occurrences in a gro-
tesque and unexpected light. In his earlier works, the skill and vigour
with which these operations were performed were so remarkable
as to make it difficult to analyse the precise means by w r hich the
effect was produced on the mind of the reader. Now that familiarity
has deprived his books of the gloss and freshness which they formerly
possessed, the mechanism is laid bare ; and tho fact that the means
by w r hich the effect is produced are really mechanical has become
painfully apparent. It would not, indeed, he matter of much
difficulty to frame from such a book as .4 Talc of Two Cities regular
recipes for grotesque and pathetic writing, by which any required
quantity of the article might be produced with infallible certainty.
The production of pathos is the simpler of the two. With a little
practice and a good deal of determination it would really be as easy
to harrow up people’s feelings as to poke the fire. The whole art
is to take a melancholy subject, and rub the reader’s nose in it, and
this does not require any particular amount of skill or knowledge.
To be grotesque is a rather more difficult trick than to be pathetic ;
but it is just as much a trick, capable of being learned and performed
almost mechanically. One principal element of grotesqueness is
unexpected incongruity ; and inasmuch as most things are different
from most other things, there is in nature a supply of this element
of grotesqueness which is absolutely inexhaustible. Whenever
Mr. Dickens writes a novel, he makes two or three comic characters
just as he might cut a pig out of a piece of orange peel. In the
present story there are tw'o comic characters, one of which is amusing
by reason of the facts that his name is Jerry Cruncher, that Ins
hair sticks out like iron spikes, and that, having reproached his w ife
for “ flopping down on her knees ” to pray, he goes on for seventeen
years speaking of praying as “ flopping.”" If, instead of saying that
his hair was like iron spikes, Mr. Dickens had said his ears were
like mutton-chops, or his nose like a Bologna sausage, the effect
would have been much the same. One of his former characters
was identified by a habit of staring at things and people with his
teeth, and another by a propensity to draw his moustache up
imder his nose, and his nose down over his moustache. As there
are many members in one body, Mr. Dickens may possibly live
long enough to have a character for each of them, so that he may have
one character identified by his eyebrows, another by his nostrils,
and another by his toe-nails. No popularity can disguise the fact
that this is the very lowest of low styles of art. England as well
as France comes in for Mr. Dickens’s favours. He takes a sort of
pleasure, which appears to us insolent and unbecomingin the extreme,
in drawing the attention of his readers exclusively to the bad and
weak points in tho history and character -of their immediate an-
cestors. The grandfathers of the present generation were, according
to him, a sort of savages, or very little better. They were cruel*

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 325

bigoted, unjust, ill-governed, oppressed, and neglected in e very-
possible way. The childish delight with which Mr. Dickens acts
Jack Horner, and says, “ What a good boy am I,” in comparison
with my benighted ancestors, is thoroughly contemptible . — Saturday
Review , December 17, 1859.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

A furious assault was made upon him (Dickens) some two years
since by the Saturday Review , and it may be in the memory of
readers that a report for some time obtained, that after reading
that review Mr. Dickens retired to bed and remained for months
in a state of hopeless lethargy, that it needed the constant applica-
tion of warm flannels, and bathings of mustard and turpentine, and
the united influence of at least a dozen physicians to restore him
to consciousness. We are glad, however, to find that he has survived
the attack, and comes before the world with a work equalling,
perhaps, in every way, any of the cheerful creations of his observant
mind and graphic pen. We firmly believe Mr. Dickens knows
as much of the ways and manners of religious people as a Hottentot
(a gentle critic reminded us, when we said so, that “ we love him so
much we wish he knew more ”) ; and when he paints religious
people, or attempts to do so, he draws entirely upon the stores of his
iniinite fancy. No reader of Dickens has to be told to notice how
he piles absurdities in rapid succession upon each other, like the very
bricks of his humorous building. He sees in the most out-of-the-
way objects grotesque, and queer, and comical analogies ; he sets
but light store by them, for they roll and tumble about like waves
over and through all his works. Indeed, many will be inclined
to regard them as one of his chief excellences ; on the contrary, they
are the vice of his writings. His profusion of absurdity, his per-
ception of the ludicrous analogies of things, is not short of amazing.
— Eclectic Review , October 1801.

On the whole to us, not expecting very great things, this novel
has proved an agreeable surprise. More compact than usual in
its structure, it contains a good many striking passages, a few racy
and one or two masterly portraits, a story for the most part cleverly
sustained and wrought out to no lame or disjointed issues. In
his characters, Mr. Dickens repeats himself least of all living
novelists — a virtuo which time has not yet impaired, and on which
too great a stress can hardly be laid. Those in his present work
are for the most part not more distinct from each other than from
any to be found in former works. His plot, like his characters,
however improbable, has a kind of artistic unity and clear purpose,
enhanced in this case by tho absence of much line -drawn senti-
ment and the scarcity of surplus details. If the author must "keep
on writing novels to the last, we shall be quite content to gauge
the worth of his future essays by the standard furnished to us in
Great Expectations . After a careful reading of Great Expectations >
we must own to having found the book in most ways better than

326

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

-our very small expectations could have foreboded. But, in saying
this much, we are very far from endorsing the notion that it comes
in any way near those earlier works which made, and which alone
aro likely hereafter to keep alive, their author’s fame. — Dublin
University Magazine , December 1861.

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mr. Dickens has now, to our knowledge, for sixteen years been
haunted by a great dust-heap. In the Household Words for 1850
first appeared the account of that amazing mound. All his life
long, at any rate in all that portion of it with which the public
is acquainted, our writer has been industriously engaged in attempt-
ing to ferret out the bright things in dirty places ; he has been
like a_ very Parisian chiffon nier, industriously searching, with
intense eye, among the sweepings, the odds and ends and puddles
of society, if haply some overlooked and undiscovered loveliness
might not be found there. In the sixteenth number of the House-
hold Words for 1850, lie surprised many of his readers by a descrip-
tion of some of these huge suburban heaps and mounds, more
common and conspicuous, we fancy, then than now. We should
think that our readers have not forgotten that paper. A dust-
heap, he told his readers, was very frequently worth thousands of
pounds. . . . Perhaps, as a story, it is quite equal to any Mr. Dickens
has told : it is sustained throughout ; there is nothing in the
plot too strained or unnatural. There are many things in the
writings of Mr. Dickens, perhaps in these volumes, which we
regret, and from which we are free to dissent ; but, true in these,
his last essays, to the spirit of his earliest works, the poor — the
poor, lowly, unknown outcasts and offcasts — seem to be the objects
of intensest interest to him. Our admiration of him is not un-
consciousness of other qualities possessed by other writers, and
which he does not possess ; but in the feeling of the infinite ease
with which he manipulates his own material — the rapid spring and
dart of his social sympathies, and of that overflowing kindness of
heart which his wide knowledge of man in all his relations, that
shrewd glance into social foibles and appalling sins, aro unable
to impair or prevent. We close the volumes, and put them by
with gratitude for much pleasure, and more especially with thank-
fulness that Mr. Dickens, being where he is, and what ho is, is
able so courageously to speak, and preach to, and reprove some
of our great social sins ; and with thankfulness too, for the hope
that ho may yet be spared for many years to do the work of a
man and a brother, in the work of an artist. — Eclectic Review ,
November 1865.

Our Mutual Friend is, to our perception, the poorest of Mr.
Dickens’s works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary
embarrassment, but of permanent exhaustion. It is wanting in
inspiration. For the last ten years it has seemed to us that Mr.
Dickens has been unmistakably forcing himself. Bleak House was

DICKENS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. '327

forced ; Little Dorrit was laboured ; the present work is dug out a®
with a spade and pickaxe. Of course — to anticipate the usual
argument — who but Dickens could have written it ? Who, indeed l
Who else could have established a lady in business in a novel on
the admirably solid basis of her always putting on gloves and tying
a handkerchief round her head in moments of grief, and of her
habitually addressing her family with “ Peace ! hold ! ” It is
hardly too much to say that every character here put before us is
a mere bundle of eccentricities, animated by no principle of nature
whatever. The word humanity strikes us as strangely discordant
in the midst of these pages, for, let us boldly declare it, there is
no humanity here. — Nation (New York), December 21, 1865.

His severest critics, we suppose, will not deny Mr. Dickens’s
genius, not of the highest indeed, but still of a very rare order.
When we look back upon his long gallery of portraits, Sam Weller,
Chadband, Pecksniff, Pickwick, and Mrs. Gamp; when we consider
how much we should lose if deprived of all these, and all their whims
and fancies, we must confess that their creator does not belong to
the common roll of authors. But, on the other hand, when we
compare Mr. Dickens to the world’s great humorists — Aristo-
phanes, Moliere, Swift, Cervantes, and Shakespeare — then we see
liow far short lie comes of the highest rank of genius. Pecksniff
weighs as chaff in the balance against Tartu ffe, and Pickwick is a
mere monster beside the Don of Spain. The more we study Falstaff,
Gulliver, and Saneho Panza, the more we perceive the art of the
artist and thinker ; but the closer we look at Mr. Dickens’s char-
acters, the more we detect the trickery of an artificer. The more
we analyse Mr. Dickens, the more \\e perceive that his humour
runs into riotous extravagance, while his pathos degenerates into
sentimentality. His characters, in fact, aro a bundle of deformities..
And he appears, too, to value them because they aro deformed, as
some minds value a crooked sixpence more than a sound coin. He
has made the fatal mistake against which Goethe warned the artist.
Everything with him is not supra naturam, but extra naturam . His
whole art is founded on false principles. A number of automatons
are moving about, who are all, so to speak, tattooed with various,
characteristics. There is the great automaton, Podsnap, who is.
tattooed with a flourish of the right arm and a flush of the face, and
the minor automaton, Mr. Lammle, who is tattooed with ginger
eyebrows. Dancers are called <k bathers,” and one of them is
distinguished by his ambling. In fact, Mr. Dickens here seems
to regard his characters as Du Frcsne says the English did their
dogs, quanto deformiores co mmorcs aestimant. We believe that all
England would have been deepty shocked had Mr. Dickens been
killed in the Stapleliurst accident. But many minds will be equally
shocked by the melodramatic way in which he speaks of his escape.
Those who are curious to understand the tricks of his style should
analyse the last section. He first endeavours to raise a joke about
Mr. and Mrs. Lammle, “ in their manuscript dress,” and his other
fictitious characters being rescued from the railway carriage, and

328

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

then turns off to moralise and improve upon his own escape, con-
eluding the whole with a theatrical tag about “ The End,” which
refers both to the conclusion of the book and his life. We write
this in no carping spirit, but because it so fully explains to us the
cause of Mr. Dickens’s failures — a want of sincerity, and the deter-
mination to raise either a laugh or a tear at the expense of the most
Sacred of things . — Westminster Review , April 1S66.

I left the country on parole, if I may put it so, and started on my
expedition [to Algeria]. I went direct to Paris, spent only one
night there, and next morning took the train for Marseilles. That
much of the journey was not unfamiliar to me, and 1 can remember
that I beguiled most of my hours in the train by reading over again,
and not even for the second time, Our Mutual Friend. I suppose
that anyone with a properly balanced mind would, if he thought it
judicious to read for hours in an express train, have read something
which fitted in with the scenery or the historical associations of the
country through which he was travelling. Put 1 had come across
Our Mutual Friend by chance just as 1 was leaving London, and
thought I could not beguile my journey more agreeably than by
studying once again a novel to which 1 think that even Dickens’s
warmest admirers have not always done justice. For myself, 1 am
inclined to rank it among the best of the great master's novels, and
I enjoyed it more than ever during this day of foreign travel. I
can now never hear the name of Our Mutual Friend mentioned
without finding that journey from Paris to Marseilles brought back
vividly to my memory, and without seeing myself in the railway
carriage bending over the pages of the delightful novel. — Justin
McCarthy, in The Story of an Irishman.

EDWIN DROOD.

So far as we can judge by close observation of those who now
read Edwin Drood at the same age at which most of us first learnt
to enjoy the Old Curiosity Shop and Martin Chuzzlcwit , there does
not seem to be any deficiency in the capacity of the rising genera-
tion to enter heartily into its still fresh humour. Edwin Drood does
not seem to us nearer the standard of his first few works than any-
thing he had written for many years back. No doubt there are
all Mr. Dickens’s faults in this story quite unchanged. He never
learned to draw a human being as distinct from an oddity, and all
his characters which are not oddities are false. Again, he never
learned the distinguished signs of genuine sentiment ; and just as
nothing can be vulgarer than the sentimental passages in Nicholas
Nickleby and Martin Chuzzlcwit , so nothing can, at any rate, bo much
falser or in worst taste than the sentimental scenes in Edurin Drood . —
.Spectator , October 1, 1870.

XVI

THE PRAISE OF DICKENS

ANTHONY TROLLOPE.

Whatever he did seemed to come from him easily, as though he
delighted in the doing of it. To hear him speak was to long to be
a speaker oneself ; because the thing, w hen properly managed,
could evidently be done so easily, so pleasantly, with such gratifica-
tion not only to all hearers, but to oneself. Of his novels, the first
striking circumstance is their unprecedented popularity. When the
masses of English readers, in all English reading countries, have
agreed to love the waitings of any writer, their verdict will be stronger
than that of any one judge, let that judge be ever so learned and
ever so thoughtful. However the writer may have achieved his
object, he has accomplished that which must be the desire of every
author, — he has spoken to men and women w r ho have opened their
ears to his w r ords, and have listened to them. In this respect Dickens
was, probably, more fortunate during his ow r n life than any writer
that ever lived. The English-speaking public may be counted,
perhaps, as a hundred millions, and wherever English is read these
books are popular from the highest to the lowest, — among all classes
that read. And no other writer of the English language except
Shakespeare has left so many types of character as Dickens has
done, characters which are known by their names familiarly as
household words, and which bring to our minds, vividly and at
once, a certain well -understood set of ideas, habits, phrases, and
costumes, making together a man, or woman, or child, w r hom we
know at a glance and recognise at a sound, — as we do our own inti-
mate friends. And it may be doubted whether even Shakespeare
has done this for so wide a circle of acquaintance. Most of us have
probably heard Dickens’s works often criticised, want of art in
the choice of words and w ant of naturo in the creation of character,
having been the faults most frequently attributed to him. But
his words have been so potent, whether they may be right or wTong
according to any fixed rule, that they have justified themselves by
making themselves into a language w hich is in itself popular ; and his
characters, if unnatural, have mado a second naturo by their own
force. It is fatuous to condemn that as deficient in art which has
been so full of art os to captivate all men. If the thing be done

330

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

which was the aim of the artist — fully done — done beyond the
power of other artists to accomplish, — the timo for criticising the
mode of doing it is gone by. The example, indeed, may be dangerous
to others ; as they have found who have imitated Dickons, and
others will find who may imitate him in future. It always seemed
to me that no man ever devoted himself so entirely as Charles
Dickens to things which he understood, and in which he could work
with effect. Of other matters he seemed to have a disregard, —
and for many things almost a contempt which was marvellous.
To literature in all its branches his attachment was deep, — and his
belief in it w^as a thorough conviction. He could speak about it
as no other man spoke. He was always enthusiastic in its in-
terests, ready to push on beginners, quick to encourage those w T ho
w r cre winning their way to success, sympathetic with his contem-
poraries, and greatly generous to aid those who were failing. He
thoroughly believed in literature, but in politics he seemed to have
no belief at all. As years roll on we shall learn to appreciate his
loss. He now rests in the spot consecrated to the memory of our
greatest and noblest ; and Englishmen would certainly not have
been contented had he been laid elsewhere. — Anthony Trollope, in
St. Paul's Magazine , July 1870.

MONCURE D. CONWAY.

Charles Dickens came like one of our Rappahannock freshets,
which once or twice rose high enough to float logs in our wood-cellar.
Methodist prejudices against novel-reading were in this case floated,
and I remember my parents laughing and wxeping over the books
of “ Boz ” w r hile I was only old enough to build infant romances
out of Cruikshank’s illustrations. Dickens supplied our homes with
new fables, phrases, types. Our neighbour, Douglas Gordon, broke
a small blood-vessel laughing over Pickwick , and we pitied him not
for the lesson, but because his doctor forbade him to read Dickens.
My baby-brother Richard acquired by his infant excitability the
sobriquet “ Tim Linkinwater .” — C 3.

DEAN HOLE.

Charles Dickens admitted my claim to be one of his earliest and
most enthusiastic admirers, when I told him that, as a boy at school,
with an infinite appreciation of cheesecakes, I had nevertheless
saved half my income, sixpence a week, to buy the monthly numbers
of Pickwick ; and he expressed his hope that I should bo interested
in somo of the scenes of his stories when I camo to his home at
Gad’s Hill. I little thought that circumstances, which I need not
detail, would prevent me from entering that house until the
illustrious owner had been many years in his grave ; or that I should
pass the latter portion of my life on earth among the scenes to which
he referred ; little more than a mile from the homo and school of
his childhood at Chatham. ... I too enjoyed, as Dickons enjoyed,
the woods and glades of beautiful Cobham, having free access from

THE PRAISE OF DICKENS.

331

the generous owner ; and in its garden grounds have sat in the Swiss
chalet, which the great actor (Fechter) gave to the great author, and
in which, placed in a shrubbery, and bright with mirrors, reflecting
the fields around, he wrote, with flowers always on his table, and the
birds singing around him, in the summer months. It was removed
after his death, to Cobham, and is safe from pocket-knives and petty
larcenies in the careful custody of Lord Damley. In this chalet he
passed the greater part of his last day on earth, 8th June 1870,
writing the unfinished story of Edwin Drood. Coming yet nearer
home, I little thought when, in that same history of Edwin Drood,

I read of “ the ancient English cathedral, having for sufficient
reasons the fictitious name of Cloisterham,” but being Rochester,
of Minor Canon Corner, and of “ the dean, who, with a pleasant
air of patronage, as nearly cocks his quaint hat as a dean in good
spirits may ” (Dickens forgot that the hat decanal is cocked always),

“ and directs his comely gaiters homewards” — I little thought,
one hundred and fifty miles away, that on this stage, and in that*
character and costume, I was to conclude the little drama of my
lfe.

A critical autocrat recently informed me that “ Charles Dickens
was going out of fashion ” ; whereupon I inquired, as one profoundly
impressed, and gasping for more information, “ whether he thought
that Shakespeare would be h la mode this season, and what he
considered the newest and sweetest thing in the beau monde of
intellect ? ” Pickwick , Nicholas NicHeby , Oliver Twisty The Old
Curiosity Shop, David Copper field, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas
Carol, out of fashion ! Not while the English language remains
as now, and they who speak it have brains to appreciate humour,
and hearts to sympathise with woe . — II 3.

JAMES PAYN.

Personal acquaintance with him increased rather than diminished
his marvellous attraction for me. In general society, especially
if it has been of an artificial kind, I have known his manner to betray
some senso of effort, but in a company with whom he could feel at
home, I have never met a man more natural or more charming.
He never wasted time in commonplaces — though a lively talker,
he never uttered a platitude — and what ho had to say he said as if
he meant it. On an occasion lie once spoke of himself as 4 4 very
human ” : he did so, of course, in a depreciatory sense ; he was the
last person in the world to affect to possess any other nature than
that of his fellows. When someone said, “ How wicked the world
is ! ” he answered, 44 True ; and what a satisfaction it is that neither
you nor I belong to it.” But the fact is, it was this very humanity
which was his charm. Whatever there was of him was real without
padding ; and whatever was genuine in others had a sympathetic
attraction for him. The subject, however, which most interested
him (and, in a less degree, this was also the ease with Thackeray)
was the dramatic — nay, even the melodramatic — side of human
nature. He hod stories without end, taken from the very page of

332

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

life, of quite a different kind from those with which he made his
readers familiar. There are, indeed, indications of this tendency
in his writings, as in the tales interspersed in Pickwick , in the aban-
doned commencement of Humphrey's Clock , and, more markedly,
in his occasional sketches, but they were much more common in his
private talk. When visiting the exhibition of Hablot Browne's
pictures the other day I was much struck by the fact that, when
indulging his own taste, the subjects chosen by the artist were not
humorous but sombre and eerie. This, I feel sure, was what made
him so acceptable an illustrator to Dickens. He could not only
depict humorous scenes with feeling, but also such grim imaginings
as the old Roman looking down on dead Mr. Tulkinghorn, and the
Ghost Walk at Chcsney Wold. The mind of Dickens, which most
of his readers picture to themselves as revelling in sunshine, was in
fact more attracted to the darker side of life, though there was far
too much of geniality in him to permit it to become morbid. On the
occasion of our first- meeting, however [in 1857], I saw nothing of
all this : he was full of fun and brightness, and in five minutes
I felt as much at my ease with him as though I had known him as
long as I had known his books. — P 4.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

Twenty pages of the Quarterly Pi (view, July 1902, were occupied
by an appreciation of the work of Charles Dickens, by the late
Mr. Sw inburne. His severest censure was reserved for “ the cheap-
jack Radicalism ” of the Child's History of England. But his
chief scorn was expended on those who had adversely criticised
Dickens. Those w ho deny truthfulness and realism to the imagina-
tion or genius of Dickens were “ blatant boobies ! “ The in-

credible immensity of Dickens's creative power sufficed for a fame
great enough to deserve the applause and the thanksgiving of all
men w T orthy to acclaim it, and the contempt of such a Triton of the
minnows as Matthew Arnold.” The criticism of G. H. Lew r es
provoked him to speak of the “ chattering duncery and the impudent
malignity of so consummate and psoudosophical a quack as George
Henry Lewes. Not even such a paM-master in the noble science
of defamation could plausibly have dared to cite in support of his
insolent and idiotic impeachment either the leading or the supple-
mentary characters in A Tale of Two Cities .” Swinburne did not
like Little Nell. “ She is a monster as inhuman as a baby with
two heads.” He did not think very much of Nicholas Nickleljy ;
he did not consider The Old Curiosity Shop in any way a good
story ; and he was not enthusiastic about Dombey and Son . But
of almost all the other novels he had nothing but unstinted praise.
Dickens’s two best novels, he thought, were David Cop^terfield and
Great Expectations. Of David Copper field he wrote : “ From the
first chapter to the last it is unmistakable by any eye above the
level and beyond the insight of a beetle’s as ono of the masterpieces
to which time can only add a new charm and an unimaginable value.”
For the perfect excellence of this masterpiece he found no words

THE PRAISE OF DICKENS.

333

too strong. The story he regarded as incomparably finer than
Great Expectations. There could be none superior, if there be any
equal to it, in the whole range of English fiction, except Vanity
Fair and The Newcomes , if even they might claim exception. There
could surely be found no equal or nearly equal number of living
and ever - living figures. Great Expectations was Dickens’s last
great work. The defects in it were nearly as imperceptible as spots
on the sun or shadows on a sunlit sea. Barnaby Badge could
hardly in common justice be said to fail short of the crowning
phrase of being a faultless work of creation. In Martin Chuzzlewit ,
that neglected and irregular masterpiece, his comic and his tragic
genius rose now and then to the very highest pitch of all. Sairey
Cam}) had once again risen to the unimaginable supremacy of
triumph by rivalling the unspeakable perfection of Mrs. Quickly’s
eloquence at its best.

“ We acknowledge with infinite thanksgiving of inexhaustible
laughter and of rapturous admiration the very greatest comic
poet or creator that ever lived to make the life of other men more
bright and more glad and more perfect than ever, without his
beneficent influence, it possibly or imaginably could have been.”

Mr. Swinburne again and again returned to David Copper field ,
“ w hich is perhaps the greatest gift bestowed on us by this magni-
ficent- and immortal benefactor.” Of A Tale of Two Cities , he wrote
that it was the most ingeniously and inventively and dramatically
constructed of all the master's works, but Hard Times was greater
in moral and pathetic and humorous effect. Of A Tale of Two
Cities, Mr. Swinburne said that “this faultless work of tragic and
creative art has nothing of the rich and various exuberance which
makes of Barnaby Badge so marvellous an example of youthful
genius in all the glowing growth of its bright and fiery April ; but
it has the classic and poetic symmetry of perfect execution and of
perfect design.” Of Little Dorr it , whom lie described as “Little
Nell grown big,” he wrote that it contained many passages of
unsurpassable excellence. “ The fusion of humour and horror in
the marvellous chapter which describes the day after the death of
Mr. Merdle is comparable only with the kindred work of such
creators as the authors of Lcs Miserablvs and King Lear , and nothing
in the work of Balzac is newer and truer and more terrible than
tiie relentless yet not unmerciful evolution of the central figure in
the story.”

MR. W. S. LILLY.

On 18th January 1805, Mr. W. S. Lilly commenced a series of
lectures at the Royal Institution on “Four English Humorists of
the Nineteenth Century.” In his first address, on “The Humorist
as Democrat,” ho took Charles Dickens as his representative man.
Commencing with a definition of “ humorist,” Mr. Lilly insisted
on the necessity of genius in the constitution of that character.
The humorous genius treated his subject with playfulness. The

334 DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

time.had now arrived, he said, when we could fairly judge of Dickens
as a literary artist, since the magnetic spell of his personality held
us captive no longer. That magnetism was a marvellous thing.
Sydney Smith said, “ I resisted Mr. Dickens as long as I could,
but he has conquered me.” As a boy, the lecturer admitted, he
too had been conquered. And yet to-day he had to confess that
he went back to Dickens with an effort. In his latter days Dickens
was fond of talking about his “ art ; ” he considered his later work
his best. The truth was, his best work was done at the commence-
ment of his career. Pickwick was his greatest achievement ; the
•fun was unequalled, the pathos of the finest order in many places.
Yet the author thought slightly of it ; he aimed at “ better work ; ”
throughout his whole career he strove earnestly after a standard
of perfection which he never actually realised. Perhaps he
came nearest to this in David Copper field. With vigour and origin-
ality he was superabundantly endowed. Originality became a
passion. He lived in his w r ork ; the children of his brain were as
real as those of flesh and blood to him, and that was precisely the
reason why he made them so real to us, notwithstanding that they
might be monstrosities, with no counterpart in actual life. This
was abundantly evident in his readings. Never were such readings ;
he was one man sustaining three or four parts without scenery or
costume, yet making the whole thing live before us, as they might
have lived upon the dramatic stage. Those who spoke of his
44 affectations ” did so unjustly; his mannerisms were no more
affectations than the dialect of Carlyle or the stage voice and walk
of Irving — they w r ere part and parcel of the man. Leigh Hunt
said Dickens had life enough for fifty men, and this was no over-
statement. He knew’ how* to touch the strings of laughter and of
weeping (so near akin), to move us to boisterous merriment at will,
or to quiet scorn, or the rush of sweet tears. He (the lecturer)
did not know any English w riter w ho had touched higher excellence
in burlesque, caricature, and pathos. Mr. Lilly read an extract
or two in illustration of these three qualities, taking Sam Weller's
story of the gentleman w r ho blew out his brains “ in support of his
great principle as muffins was wholesome,” as a perfect type of the
first-named quality. Coming in the end to a considered judgment
of Dickens’s work, the lecturer held that his mission was to democ-
ratise the novel. One of the great causes of his popularity was
that he revealed the masses to the classes, and the masses to them-
selves. Of the common people — “ the lower middles ” — he knew
every detail of th£ir actions, thoughts, and speech. He w r as the
first to reveal the depths of misery and degradation lying close
around our own doors. Until wo read him we did not know the
depths of pity in our own hearts. The masses themselves owed
to him a perception of the value of imagination in common life ;
he showei them the beauties of imagination. Their own wwld
was transfigured by bis genius ; he was the Homer of the people.
Finally, throughout the whole of his career he laboured incessantly
for moral, social, and political reforms. And now, what would

THE PRAISE OF DICKEN&

335

be his permanent place in English literature ? That question could
not be definitely answered even yet. The";balance in which Time
weighed the works of genius vibrated long before it came to an
adjustment. Dickens was as numerously read and seemed as
popular as ever amongst the masses, but with people of culture it
was different. His works were not seen in the hands of young
men at college — that was a significant fact, and a bad sign for the
future. But yet the ethical sentiment which ran so persistently
through Dickens might in the end cover a multitude of sins in taste.
And in any case they must remember what Carlyle said of hifn —
“ Every inch an Honest Man.”

[Mr. Lilly’s lectures were afterwards published in book form by
Mr. John Murray.]

DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.

A year or two ago we met suddenly a host of people who really
couldn’t stand Dickens. Most of them (of course) were “ the people
of whom crowds are made,” owning no sort of mental furniture
worth exchange or purchase. They killed the fashion of despising
Dickens as a fashion, and the Superior Person, finding that his
sorrowful inability was no longer an exclusive thing, ceased to brag
about it. In half a generation some of our superiors, for the mere
sake of originality in judgment, will be going back to the pages of
that immortal master — immortal as men count literary immortality
— and will begin to tell us that after all there was really something
in him. It was Mr. W. 1). Howells, an American writer of dis-
tinguished ability, as times go, who set afloat the phrase that since
the death of Thackeray and Dickens fiction lias become a finer art.
If Mr. Howells had meant what many people supposed him to mean,
the saying would have been merely impudent. He used the word
“ liner ” in its literal sense, and meant only that a fashion of minute-
ness in investigation and in style had come upon us. But the
microscopist was never popular, and could never hope to be. He is
dead now, and the younger men are giving us vigorous copies of
Dumas, and Scott, and Edgar Allan Poe, and some of them are
fusing the methods of Dickens with those of later and earlier writers.
We are in for an era of broad effect again.

With the solitary exception of Sir Walter Scott, it is probable
that no man ever inspired such a host of imitators as Charles Dickens.
There is not a writer of fiction at this hour, in any land where fiction
is a recognised trade or art, who is not, whether ho knows it, and
owns it, or no, largely inlluenced by Dickens. His method has gone
into the atmosphere of fiction, as that of all really great writers
must do, and wc might as well swear to unmix our oxygen and
hydrogen as to stand clear of his influences. To stand clear of these
influences you must stand apart from all modem thought and
sentiment. You must have read nothing that has been written
in the last sixty years, and you must have been bred on a desert
Island. He is on a hundred thousand magisterial benches every

336

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

day. There is not a hospital patient in any country who has not
at this minute a right to thank God that Dickens lived. What
his blessed and bountiful hand has done for the poor and oppressed,
and them that had no helper, no man knows. Ho made charity
and good-feeling a religion. Millions and millions of money have
flowed from the coffers of the rich for the benefit of the poor because
of his books. A great part of our daily life, and a good deal of the
best of it, is of liis making.

No single man ever made such opportunities for himself. No
single man was ever so widely and permanently useful. No single
man ever sowed gentleness and mercy with so broad a sweep.

The chief fault the superficial modern critic has to find with
Dickens is a sort of rumbustious boisterousness in the expression
of emotion. But let one thing be pointed out, and let me point it
out in my own fashion. Tom Hood, who was a true poet, and the
best of our English wits, and probably as good a judge of good work
as any person now’ alive, went home after meeting with Dickens,
and in a playful enthusiasm told his wife to cut off his hand and
bottle it, because it had shaken hands with “ Boz.” Lord Jeffrey,
who w T as cold as a critic, cried over Little Nell. So did Sydney
Smith, who was very far from being a blubbering sentimentalist.

The new man says of Dickens that his sentiment rings false.
This is a mistake. It rings old-fashioned. No false note ever
moved a world, and the world combined to love his very name.
There were real tears in thousands of households when he died, and
they were as sincere and as real as if they had arisen at the loss of a
personal friend.

We, who in spite of fashion remain true to our allegiance to the
magician of our youth, who can never worship or love another as
we loved and worshipped him, are quite contented in the slight
inevitable dimming of his fame. He is still in the hearts of the
people, and there he has only one rival. — David Christie Murray,
in My Contemporaries in Fiction .

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

What Dickens found in the dark streets of this City of London,
Walt discovered everywhere in the many-coloured life of America;
the spirit of natural Love and Sympathy filling every occupation
with enchantment, and turning Earth into Wonderland. Whitman
expressed in colossal cipher the same rudimentary Joy of Life,
the same elemental passions and affections, which Dickens expressed
in delightful Fairy Tales ; and in both one faith w f as supreme and
dominant, faith in Man and in the divinity of Man’s human
destiny. . . . Walt was a great poet and philosopher, Dickens was a
great poet and Romancist, but both were close akin in that elemental
faith of which I have spoken, and both were simple, lovable, child-
like men — Dickens in spite of his popularity and waistcoats, Walt
in spite of that florid diffusiveness which caused him to be christened
by an English criticaster as “ the Jack Bunsby of Parnassus t ” —
Robert Buchanan, in the Sunday Special , December 1899.

THE PRAISE OF DICKENS.

337

GEOROE GIS3INO.

“ More than a quarter of a century has now elapsed,’ * writes Mr.
George Gissing in his Charles Dickens : a Critical Study , “ since the
death of Charles Dickens. The time which shaped him and sent
him forth is so far behind us as to have become a matter of historical
study for the present generation ; the time which knew him as one
of its foremost figures, and owed so much to the influences of his
wondrous personality, is already made remote by a social revolution
of which ho watched the mere beginning. It seems possible to
regard Dickens from the standpoint of posterity ; to consider his
career, to review his literary work, and to estimate his total activity
in relation to an ago which, intelligibly speaking, is no longer our
own.” Mr. Gissing’ s intention, as stated in his opening chapter,
was to vindicate him [Dickens] against the familiar complaint that,
however trustworthy his background, the figures designed upon it
in general are mere forms of fantasy. On re-reading his works, it
is not thus that Dickens’s characters on the whole impress me.
With reserves which will appear in the course of my essay, I believe
him to have been what he always claimed to be. a very accurate
painter of the human beings no less than of the social conditions
lie saw about him. Readers of Dickens who exclaim at the ‘ un-
reality ’ of his characters (I do not here speak of his conduct of a
story) will generally be found unacquainted with the English lower
classes of to-day.” Mr. Gissing had a certain fitness for estimating
Dickens’s work in this field, and among theso classes — “ a class (or
classes),” as he says himself, “ characterised by dulness, prejudice,,
dogged individuality, and manners, to say the least, unengaging.”
For among them Mr. Gissing spent much of his lift, and they form
not only the background of his own work, but the tigures projected
upon it.

Mr. George Gissing contributed a very interesting semi -auto-
biographical article to the ‘ v Dickens Number ” of Literature ,
January 1902. In this essay Mr. Gissing tells us of the great in-
fluence that Dickons had on his youthful imagination and on his
development as a novelist. He was stirred “ not to imitate Dickens
as a novelist, but to follow afar off his example as a worker.” Mr.
Gissing’s account of his early life in London, more than twenty
years ago, contains the following eloquent passage : “ It was a
minor matter to me.” he writes. “ a point, by the way, that I had
to find the means of keeping myself alive ; what I chiefly thought
of was that now at length I could go hither or thither in London’s
immensity seeking for the places which had been made known to
me by Dickens. Previous short visits had eased my mind about
the sights that everyone must sec ; I now had leisure to wander
among the byways, making real to my vision what hitherto had been
but names and insubstantial shapes. ... At times, when walking
with other thoughts, I would come upon a discovery ; the name
at a street corner would catch my eye and thrill me. Thus, one
day in the City, I found myself at the entrance to Be vis Marks. I
had just been making an application in answer to some advertise-

338

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE,

ment — of course, fruitlessly; but what was that disappointment
compared with the discovery of Bevis Marks ! Here dwelt Mr.
Brass, and Sally, and the Marchioness. Up and down the little
street, this side and that, I went gazing and dreaming. ... I am
not sure that I had any dinner that day, but, if not, I dare say I
did not mind very much.” Perhaps few things would have more
delighted Dickens than such a tribute to his power of giving a real
life and a local habitation to the creations of his mind.

MR. COMYNS CARR.

Mr. J. Comyns Carr’s book, Some Eminent Victorian a contains
the following noteworthy jottings :

u I can remember now receiving from Charles Dickens, with
a pain that was also blended with pleasure, a polite little note in
blue ink returning one of my many rejected communications.”

“ In romance his [Bunie Jones’s] task took a wide range, and
it will surprise many, who see how rigorously all suggestion of
humour is excluded from his paintings, to learn that his knowledge
of Dickens was almost encyclopaedic, and his love of him, like that
of Mr. Swinburne, without limit of praise.”

“ Of literature, in the wider sense of the term, I never discovered
that Whistler had any profound knowledge, though when he wanted
a quotation to heighten the sarcasm of any biting senteneo it was
happily chosen, and most often, strangely enough, such quota-
tion would be taken from Dickens, whose humour strongly appealed
to him.”

“ Occasionally in walking home with him [Millais] from the club
he would tell me something of the men he had known well in an
earlier period of his life, but for the most part it was not especially
of painters that he spoke. Talking in this way of Thackeray and
Dickens, and other notabilities of their time, he remarked to me
that 4 the greatest gentleman of them all was John Leech.’ ”

“It is a singular fact, not I think generally recognised while they
were both living, that there are many elements of resemblance in
the features of Tennyson and Charles Dickens. I saw Dickens only
once at a reading which he gave in St. James’s Hall, and I was then
deeply impressed by the power exhibited in the upper part of the
head. But it was not until I was looking one day at a beautiful
pencil-drawing which Millais had made of Dickens after death
that I perceived the striking resemblance between them — a resem-
blance that was recognised by Tennyson himself, for while this v< ry
drawing, now the property of Mrs. Perugini, was still in Millais**
studio, Tennyson, after he had gazed at it for some time, suddenly
exclaimed, 4 This is a most extraordinary drawing. It is exactly
like myself ! ’ ”

MB. THEODORE WATTS- DUNTON.

In an article entitled “ Dickens and Father Christmas,” in the
Nineleenlh Century tor December 1907, Mr. Theodore Watts- Dunton
made a “ Yule-Tide Appeal for the Babes of Famine Street,” anti

339

THE PRAISE OF DICKENS.

at the same time gave an interesting reminiscence of the day of
Dickens’s death.

44 On that never-to-be-forgotten summer day,” he wrote, “ when
London was robbed of Charles Dickens, I was walking disconsolately
down Drury Lane, when I heard a girl with a shawl over her head,
standing at the comer of one of the side streets and talking to a
companion, exclaim, ‘ Dickens dead ? Then will Father Christmas
die too ? ’ My feet were arrested, and I turned and looked at the
speaker. I saw at once what was her line of life. She was one of
those 4 barrow -girls ’ who rise long before daybreak and go with
their husbands, or their young men, to Covent Garden Market, and,
getting there as early as four o’clock in the morning, wait while the
men make their bargains with the market gardeners, and afterwards
aid them in selling the purchases in the London streets.” Thus,
then, Dickens had become 44 a myth of the people ” before his death.
It is probable that this girl had never read the Christmas Books.

Upon this text, “ Dickens dead ? Then will Father Christmas
die too ? ” Mr. Watts-Dunton wrote the following sonnet, which
was published in the Athcnceam with the title, 44 Dickens Returns
on Christmas Day ” :

* Dickens is dead!’ Beneath that grievous cry
Jiondon seemed shivering in the summer heat ;

Strangers took up tho tale liko friends that meet:

4 Dickens is dead ! ’ said they, and hurried by ;

Street children stopped their games — they knew not why.

But some new night seemed darkening down the street.

A girl in rags, staying her way-worn feet,

Cried ‘Dickons dead? Will Father Christmas die?’

City he loved, take courage on thy way!
lie loves thee still, in ail thy joys and fears.

Though ho whose smile made bright thine eyes of grey —
Though he whose voice, uttering thy burthened years,

Made laughters bubble through thy sea of tears —

Is gone, Dickens returns on Christmas Day!”

The author points out that, the girl w as not “ ragged ; ” he used the
word with poetic licence. Having the temerity to show r his work
to her, she exclaimed : 44 Why the deuce didn't you say 4 barrer
gal ? ’ Was it becauso a 4 ragged gal ’ is more genteel than a
barrer gal without rags ? ” Explanations merely drew* forth the
reply, 41 Poets must be rum blokes, seems to me.”

MR. ANDREW LANO.

A man may not like Sophocles, may speak disrespectfully of
Virgil, and even sneer at Herodotus, and yet may be endured.
But he or she (it is usually she) who contemns Scott, and 44 cannot
read Dickens,” is a person with whom I would fain have no further
converse. If she be a lady, and if one meets her at dinner, she
must of course be borne with, and 44 suffered gladly.” But she
has dug a gulf that nothing can bridge ; she may bo fair, clever.

340

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

and popular, but she is Anathema. I feel towards her (or him if he
wears a beard) as Bucldaw did towards the person who should
make inquiries about that bridal night of Lammermoor.

Of all great writers since Scott, Dickens is probably the man
to whom the world owes most gratitude. No other has caused
so many sad hearts to be lifted up in laughter ; no other has added
so much mirth to the toilsome and perplexed life of men, of poor
and rich, of learned and unlearned. “ A vast hope has passed
across the world,” says Alfred de Musset ; we may say that with
Dickens a happy smile, a joyous laugh, went round this earth. To
have made us laugh so frequently, so inextinguishably, so kindly
— that is his great good deed. It will be said, and with a great deal
of truth, that he has purged us with pity and terror as well as with
laughter. But it is becoming plain that his command of tears is
less assured than of old, and I cannot honestly regret that some
of his pathos — not all, by any means — is losing its charm and its
certainty of appeal. Dickens's humour was rarely too obvious ;
it was essentially personal, original, quaint, unexpected, and his
own. His pathos was not infrequently derived from sources
open to all the world, and capable of being drawn from by very
commonplace writers.

There never was such another as Charles Dickens, nor shall we see
his like sooner than the like of Shakespeare. And he owed all to
native genius and hard work; he owed almost nothing to litera-
ture, and that little we regret. — Andrew Lang, in Essays in Little
(London : Henry & Co., 1891).

MR. JEROME K. JEROME.

I find, on examination, that my David Coy per field is more dilapi-
dated than any other novel upon my shelves. As I turn its dog-
cared pages, reading the familiar headlines : “ .Mr. Micawbor in

difficulties,’ ’ “ Mr. Mieawber in prison,” “ I fall in love with Dora,”
“Mr. Barkis goes out with the tide/’ “ My child-wife/’ Traddles
in a nest of roses ” — pages of my own life recur to me; so many
of my sorrows, so many of my joys are woven in my mind with this
chapter or the other. . . . Old friends, all of you, how many times
have I not slipped away from my worries into your pleasant company !
Peggotty, you dear soul, the sight of your kind eyes is so good to me !
Our mutual friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, is prone, \yo know, just
ever so slightly to gush. Good fellow that he is, ho can see no flaw
in those he loves, but you, dear lady, if you will permit me to call
you by a name much abused, he has drawn in true colours. I know
you well, with your big heart, your quick temper, your homely,
human ways of thought. You yourself will never guess your
worth — how much the world is better for such as you ! ... Mr.
Wilkins Micaw r ber, and you, most excellent of faithful wives, Mrs.
Emma Mieawber, to you I also i*aise my hat. How often has the
example of your philosophy saved me, when I, likewise, have suffered
under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities ; when the
cun of my prosperity, too, has sunk beneath the dark horizon of the

THE PRAISE OF DICKENS.

341

world — in short, when I, also, have found myself in a tight comer
I have asked myself what would the Micawbers have done in my
place. And I have answered myself. They would have sat down
to a dish of lamb’s fry, cooked and breaded by the deft hands of
Emma, followed by a brew of punch, concocted by the beaming
Wilkins, and have forgotten all their troubles, for the time being.
Whereupon, seeing first that sufficient small change was in my
pocket, I have entered the nearest restaurant, and have treated
myself to a repast of such sumptuousness as the aforesaid small
change would command, emerging from that restaurant stronger and
more fit for battle. And lo ! the sun of my prosperity has peeped
at me from over the clouds with a sly wink, as if to say, “ Cheer up,
I am only round the corner.”

Dickens suffered from too little of what some of us have too much
of— criticism. Ilis work met with too little resistance to call forth
his powers. Too often his pathos sinks to bathos, and this not from
want of skill, but from want of care. It is difficult to believe that
the popular writer who allowed his sentimentality — or rather the
public's sentimentality — to run away with him in such scenes as
the death of Paul Dombey and Little Nell was the artist who painted
the death of Sydney Carton and of Barkis, the willing. The death
of Barkis, next to the passing of Colonel Newcome, is, to my
t hinking, one of the most perfect pieces of pathos in English litera-
ture. No very dee]) emotion is concerned. Ho is a commonplace
old man, clinging foolishly to a commonplace box. His simple
wife and the old boatmen stand by, waiting calmly for the end.
There is no straining after effect. One feels death enter, dignifying
all things ; and touched by that hand, foolish old Bari is grows great.

We have to go back to Shakespeare to iind a writer who, through
fiction, has so enriched the thought of the people. Admit all
Dickens’s faults twice over, we still have one of the greatest writers
of modern times. — Jerome K. Jerome, in Idle Ideas (London:
Hurst k Blackett).

MR. w. n. HELM.

It is among the characters of Dickens that are plainly unheroic, in
the novel-reader's sense of the term, that we must seek for parallels,
if any such there be, with the creations of his French contemporary
[Balzac]. Lisbeth Fischer, who is assuredly far more than the
titular k ‘ heroine ” of La Cousine Bette , has no adequate counterpart
in English fiction. Yet thero is at least something of her unfor-
getting sense of injury, her undying spite, in Rosa Dartle.

The wonderful romances of personal adventures, amatory and
otherwise, told by the two impostors on the carrier’s cart in Un
Dtbut dans la Fte, have a real affinity with those told by Mr. Jingle
on the Rochester coach, and are no less diverting if more elaborated.
I doubt, however, if the most determined seeker for a parallel
between Balzac and Dickens could find a much closer one than is
afforded by the characters of Uriah Keep and Jean Goupil, the
notary’s clerk in Ursule MirouU. The red-haired hypocrite of

342

DICKENS IN ANECDOTE.

Canterbury, with his splay-feet, shrinking shoulders, and grimaces
of humility, and the scandal-mongering, russet-haired creature of
Nemours, with his crooked nose, short and cranky legs, and look
which 44 seemed to belong to a hunchback whose hump was inside,”
have indeed many things in common. The one dares to cast glances
of disgusting love from his red-brown eyes upon the beautiful and
virginal Agnes, and endeavours to force himself upon her threats
of evil to those she loves. When David Copperfield discovers
Uriah’s aspirations, he gives the wretch a blow on his lank cheek
with such force that 44 my fingers tingle as if I had burned them ; ”
and when justice has at length overtaken Uriah, that cold-blooded
villain appears as a repentant sinner, 44 conscious of his past follies,”
to Mr. Creakle, a Middlesex justice of the peace. Jean Goupil, on
the other hand, casts his yellow goat’s -eyes upon the lovely and
innocent Ursule, nearly causes her death by his horrible machina-
tions ; and when, by self-interest, he confesses his evjl deeds to her
lover Savinien, he receives from that honest and devoted naval
officer a blow on the cheek which nearly knocks him down. He
also declares afterwards to a juge de paix that he is 44 another man ”
altogether.

It is true that while in Uriah’s case Goppcrfield’s remark that
44 there never were greed and cunning in the world yet that did not
do too much and overreach themselves,” proves to be partly well
founded; Goupil, when we leave him at the end of the novel, is very
far from the fate that he merited, and is, in fact, regarded with high
respect in the town, though finding a punishment in his rickety,
hydrocephalous p

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Full text of "The Dickens Companion"

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